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YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 




How We Dressed for $2.50. See page 16. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE 
PHILIPPINES 



BY 

JOSEPH EARLE STEVENS 

AN EX-RESIDENT OF MANILA 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1899 



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Copyright, 1898, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S $ONS 



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TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



IN MEMORY OF 



MY MOTHER 



CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION Page xiii 

I 

Leaving" God's Country "—Hong Kong— Crossing to Luzon— Manila 
Bay— First View of the City— Earthquake Precautions— Balco- 
nies and Window-gratings — The River Pasig — Promenade of the 
Malecon— The Old City— The Puente de Espana— Population — 
A Philippine Bed— The English Club— The Luneta — A Christmas 
Dinner at the Club, Page i 

II 

Shopping at the " Botica Inglesa "—The Chit System— Celebrating 
New Year's Eve — Manila Cooking Arrangements — Floors and 
Windows — Peculiarities of the Tram-car Service — Roosters Ev- 
erywhere—Italian Opera— Philippine Music— The Mercury at 74° 
and an Epidemic of " Grippe "—Fight Between a Bull and a Tiger 
—A Sorry Fiasco— Carnival Sunday, Page 22 



III 

A Philippine Valet— The Three Days Chinese New Year — Marionettes 
and Minstrels at Manila— Yankee Skippers — Furnishing a 
Bungalow — Rats, Lizards, and Mosquitoes— A New Arrival — 
Pony-races in Santa Mesa— Cigars and Cheroots — Servants 
— Cool Mountain Breezes — House-snakes— Cost of Living— Holy 
Week, Page 43 



V1U CONTENTS 



IV 



An Up-country Excursion— Steaming up the River to the Lake- 
Legend of the Chinaman and the Crocodile— Santa Cruz and 
Pagsanjan — Dress of the Women — Mountain Gorges and River 
Rapids— Church Processions — Cocoanut Rafts— A " Carromata" 
Ride to Paquil— An Earthquake Lasting Forty-five Seconds— 
Small-pox and other Diseases in the Philippines — The Manila 
Fire Department— How Thatch Dealers Boom the Market— Cost 
of Living, Page 60 



Visit of the Sagamore— Another Mountain Excursion— The Caves of 
Montalvan— A Hundred-mile View— A Village School— A " Fi- 
esta " at Obando— The Manila Fire-tree— A Move to the Seashore 
— A Waterspout — Captain Tayler's Dilemma— A Trip Southward 
—The Lake of Taal and its Volcano — Seven Hours of Poling — A 
Night's Sleep in a Hen-coop, Page 8? 



VI 

First Storm of the Rainy Season— Fourth of July — Chinese " Chow " 
Dogs— Crullers and Pie and a Chinese Cook— A Red-letter Day 
—The China- Japan War— Manila Newspapers— General Blanco 
and the Archbishop — An American Fire-engine and its Lively 
Trial— The Coming of the Typhoon — Violence of the Wind — 
The Floods Next— Manila Monotony, Page 112 



VII 

A Series of Typhoons— A Chinese Feast-day— A Bank-holiday Excur- 
sion— Lost in the Mist— Los Banos— The " Enchanted Lake "— 
Six Dollars for a Human Life — A Religious Procession— Celebra- 
tion of the Expulsion of the Chinese— Bicycle Races and Fire- 
works, Page 737 



CONTENTS IX 



VIII 

A Trip to the South— Contents of the " Puchero "— Romblon—Cebu, 
the Southern Hemp-centre— Places Touched At— A Rich Indian 
at Camiguin— Tall Trees— Primitive Hemp-cleaners — A New 
Volcano — Mindanao Island — Moro Trophies— Iligan — Iloilo — 
Back Again at Manila, Page 149 



IX 

Club-house Chaff— Christmas Customs and Ceremonies— New Year's 
Calls— A Dance at the English Club— The Royal Exposition of 
the Philippines — Fireworks on the King's Fete Day— Electric 
Lights and the Natives— The Manila Observatory— A Hospitable 
Governor — The Convent at Antipolo, Page 173 



Exacting Harbor Regulations— The Eleanor takes French Leave— Loss 
of the Gravina — Something about the Native Ladies — Ways of 
Native Servants — A Sculptor who was a Dentist— Across the 
Bay to Orani— Children in Plenty— A Public Execution by the 
Garrote, Page 195 



XI 

Lottery Chances and Mischances— An American Cigarette-making 
Machine and its Fate — Closing up Business— How the Foreigner 
Feels Toward Life in Manila — Why the English and Germans 
Return— Restlessness among the Natives— Their Persecution — 
Departure and Farewell, Page 213 



CONCLUSION Page 230 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing 

page 

How We Dressed for $2.50 Frontispiece 

Our Office and the Punkah under which the Old Salts Sat for 

Free Sea Breezes 8 

Plaza de Cervantes, Foreign Business Quarter . . .14 

Puente de Espana. Manila's Main Highway Across the Pasig . 2o 
The Busy Pasig, from the Puente de Espana . . . . 26 

A Philippine Sleeping-machine 32 

The English Club on the Banks of the Pasig .... 40 
The Bull and Tiger Fight— Opening Exercises . . .46 

Suburb of Santa Mesa 54 

Our Destination was a Town Called Pagsanjan at the Foot of 

a Range of Mountains 60 

The Rapids in the Gorges of Pagsanjan 66 

Cocoanut Rafts on the Pasig, Drifting down to Manila . . 72 
The Little Native School under the Big Mango-tree . . 78 

Calzada de San Miguel . .84 

A Native Village Up Country ....... 90 

A " Chow " Shop on a Street Corner 98 

Puentes de Ayala, which Help two of Manila's Suburbs to Shake 

Hands Across the Pasig 106 

Calzada de San Sebastian .114 

xi 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing 
page 

Ploughing in the Rice-fields with the Carabao . . .122 
Types of True Filipinos Waiting to Call Themselves Americans. 130 

On the Banks of the Enchanted Lake 138 

In the Narrow Streets of Old Manila. A Procession . . 144 

A Citizen from the Interior 152 

How the World's Supply of Manila Hemp is Cleaned . . 160 

Moro Chiefs from Mindanao 168 

Manila Fruit-girls in a Street-Corner Attitude . . .176 

A Typical " Nipa " House .... . . 184 

The Little Flower-girl at the Opera 192 

Rapid Transit in the Suburbs of Manila 202 

The Fourth of July, '95. Execution by the Garrote . . 210 

Paseo de la Luneta 220 

Captain Tayler, the Genial Skipper of the Esmeralda . . 226 

Map of Philippines At End of Volume 



INTRODUCTION 

By the victory of our fleet at Manila Bay, one 
more of the world's side-tracked capitals has been 
pulled from obscurity into main lines of prominence 
and the average citizen is no longer left, as in days 
gone by, to suppose that Manila is spelt with two l's 
and is floating around in the South Sea somewhere 
between Fiji and Patagonia. The Philippines have 
been discovered, and the daily journals with their 
cheap maps have at last located Spain's Havana in 
the Far East. It is indeed curious that a city of 
a third of a million people — capital of a group 
of islands as large as New England, New York, 
Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey, which have 
long furnished the whole world with its entire sup- 
ply of Manila hemp, which have exported some 
160,000 tons of sugar in a single year and which to- 
day produce as excellent tobacco as that coming from 
the West Indies — it is curious, I say, that a city of 
this size should have gone so long unnoticed and mis- 
spelt. But such has been the case, and until Admiral 
Dewey fired the shots that made Manila heard round 



XIV INTRODUCTION 

the world, the people of these United States — with 
but few exceptions — lived and died without knowing 
where the stuff in their clothes-lines came from. 

Now that the Philippines are ours, do we want 
them ? Can we run them ? Are they the long-looked- 
for El Dorado which those who have never been 
there suppose ? To all of which questions — even at 
the risk of being called unpatriotic — I am inclined to 
answer, No. 

Do we want them? Do we want a group of 1,400 
islands, nearly 8,000 miles from our Western shores, 
sweltering in the tropics, swept with typhoons and 
shaken with earthquakes? Do we w r ant to under- 
take the responsibility of protecting those islands 
from the powers in Europe or the East, and of stand- 
ing sponsor for the nearly 8,000,000 native inhabitants 
that speak a score of different tongues and live on 
anything from rice to stewed grasshoppers ? Do we 
want the task of civilizing this race, of opening up 
the jungle, of setting up officials in frontier, out-of- 
the-way towns who won't have been there a month 
before they will wish to return ? 

Do we want them? No. Why? Because we have 
got enough to look after at home. Because — unlike 
the Englishman or the German who, early realizing 
that his country is too small to support him, grows 
up with the feeling that he must relieve the burden 



INTRODUCTION XV 

by going to the uttermost parts of the sea — our 
young men have room enough at home in which to 
exert their best energies without going eight or 
eleven thousand^ miles across land and water to 
tropic islands in the Far East. 

Can we run them ? The Philippines are hard ma- 
terial with which to make our first colonial experi- 
ment, and seem to demand a different sort of treat- 
ment from that which our national policy favors or 
has had experience in giving. Besides the peaceable 
natives occupying the accessible towns, the interiors 
of many of the islands are filled with aboriginal 
savages who have never even recognized the rule of 
Spain — who have never even heard of Spain, and who 
still think they are possessors of the soil. Even on 
the coast itself are tribes of savages who are almost 
as ignorant as their brethren in the interior, and only 
thirty miles from Manila are races of dwarfs that go 
without clothes, wear knee-bracelets of horsehair, 
and respect nothing save the jungle in which they 
live. To the north are the Igorrotes, to the south 
the Moros, and in between, scores of wild tribes that 
are ready to dispute possession. And is the United 
States prepared to maintain the forces and carry on 
the military operations in the fever-stricken jungles 
necessary in the march of progress to exterminate or 
civilize such races ? Have we, like England for in- 



XVI INTRODUCTION 

stance, the class of troops who could undertake that 
sort of work, and do we feel called upon to do it, 
when the same expenditure at home would go so 
much further? The Philippines must be run under, 
a despotic though kindly form of government, sup- 
ported by arms and armor-clads, and to deal with the 
perplexing questions and perplexing difficulties that 
arise, needs knowledge gained by experience, by hav- 
ing dealt with other such problems before. 

Are the Philippines an El Dorado ? Like Borneo, 
like Java and the Spice Islands, the Philippines are 
rich in natural resources, but their capacity to yield 
more than the ordinary remuneration to labor I much 
question. Leaving aside the question of gold and 
coal, in the working of which, so far, more money has 
been put into the ground than has ever been taken 
out, the great crops in these islands are sugar, hemp, 
and tobacco. The sugar crop, to be sure, has the 
possibilities that it has anywhere, where the soil is 
rich and conditions favorable. The tobacco industry 
has perhaps more possibilities, and might be made 
a close rival to that in Cuba. But the hemp crop is 
limited by the world's needs, and as those needs are 
just so much each year, there is no object in increas- 
ing a supply which up to date has been adequate. 
There are foreigners in the Philippines, who have 
been there for years, who have controlled the exports 




INTRODUCTION XV11 

of sugar or hemp or tobacco, who have made their 
living, and who from having been longer on the 
ground should be the first to improve the oppor- 
tunities thatjnaj^confe with the downfall of Spanish 
rule. There are some things which the United States 
can send to the Philippines cheaper than the Conti- 
nental manufacturers, but not many. She can send 
flour and some kinds of machinery, she can put in 
electric plants, she can build railways, but at present 
she can't produce the cheap implements, and the nec- 
essaries required by the great bulk of poor natives at 
the low price which England and Germany can. 

The Philippines are not an El Dorado simply be- 
cause for the first time they have been brought to our 
notice. They should not yield more than the ordi- 
nary return to labor, and the question is, does the 
average American want to live in a distant land, cut 
off from friends and a civilized climate, only to get 
the ordinary return for his efforts? To which, even 
though of course there is much to be said on the 
other side, I would answer, No. We have gone to 
war, remembering the Maine, to free Cuba, and at the 
first blow have taken another group of islands — a 
Cuba in the East — to deal with. I have not the 
space here to discuss the solution of the problem, 
but, for my part, I should like to see England interest- 
ed in buying back an archipelago which she formerly 



XV111 INTEODUCTION 

held for ransom, leaving us perhaps a coaling port, 
and opening up the country to such as chose to go 
there,, Then, with someone else to shoulder the 
burden of government and protection, we should still 
have all the opportunities for proving whether or not 
the islands were the El Dorado dreamed of in our 
clubs or counting-rooms. 

At the close of 1893, 1 went to Manila for Messrs. 
Henry W. Peabody & Co., of Boston and New York, 
in the interest of their hemp business, and, associated 
with Mr. A. H. Rand, remained there for two years. 
We two were the representatives of the only Ameri- 
can house doing business in the Philippines, and 
made up practically fifty per cent, of the American 
business colony in Manila. The years from 1894 to 
1896 were peculiarly peaceful with the quiet coming 
before the storm, and we were fortunate enough to 
be able to make many excursions and go into many 
parts of the island that later would have been dan- 
gerous. But as the short term of our service drew 
to a close, rumors of trouble began to circulate. The 
natives had long suffered from the demands made by 
the Church and the tax-gatherer, and there was a 
feeling that they might again attempt to throw off the 
Spanish yoke, as they attempted, without success, 
some years before. It was at this period that Messrs. 
Peabody & Co. decided it would be to their unques- 






INTKODUCTIOK XIX 

tionable advantage to retire from the islands and to 
place their business in the hands of an English firm, 
long established on the ground, and well equipped 
with men who^uirlike ourselves, looked forward to 
passing the rest of their days in the Philippines,, 
And the move was a good one, for no sooner had we 
left Manila than revolution broke out. The Spanish 
troops were at the south, and that mysterious native 
brotherhood of the Katipunan called its members to 
attack the capital. A massacre was planned, but the 
right leaders were lacking and the attempt failed. 
The troops were recalled, guards doubled, draw- 
bridges into old Manila pulled up nightly, arrests 
and executions made. As is well known, one hun- 
dred suspects were crowded into that old dungeon on 
the river, just at the corner of the city wall, and be- 
cause it came on to rain at night-fall, an officer shut 
down the trap-door leading to the prisoners' cells tc 
keep out the water. But it also kept out the air. 
and next morning sixty out of the one hundred per- 
sons were suffocated. Then Manila had her Black 
Hole. Later, other suspects were stood on the curb- 
ing that surrounds the Luneta and were shot down 
while the big artillery band discoursed patriotic music 
to the crowds that thronged the promenade. And 
from then until Admiral Dewey silenced the guns at 
Cavite and sunk the Spanish ships that used to swing 



XX INTKODUCTION 

peacefully at anchor off the breakwater, the Span- 
iards had their hands full with a revolution brought 
on by their own rotten system of government. 

If in place of the more systematic narratives of 
description, the more serious presentations of sta- 
tistics, or the more exciting accounts of the bloody 
months of the revolution and the wonderful victory 
of our gallant fleet, which are to be looked for from 
other sources, the reader cares to get some idea of 
casual life in Manila, by accepting the rather collo- 
quial chronicle of an ex-resident that follows, I shall 
have made some little return to islands that robbed 
me of little else than two years of a more hurried 
existence in State Street or Broadway. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 



Leaving " God's Country "— Hong Kong— Crossing to Luzon— Manila 
Bay — First View of the City— Earthquake Precautions — Balco- 
nies and Window-Gratings— The River Pasig — Promenade of the 
Malecon— The Old City — The Puente de Espana— Population — 
A Philippine Bed — The English Club— The Luneta — A Christmas 
Dinner at the Club. 

"I wouldn't give much for your chances of coming 
back unboxed," said the Captain to me, as the China 
steamed out from the Golden Gate on the twenty-five 
day voyage to Hong Kong via Honolulu and Yoko- 
hama. 

" That's God's country we're leaving behind, sure 
enough," said he, " and you'll find it out after a week 
or two in the Philippines. There's Howe came back 
with us last trip from there ; almost shuffled off on the 
way. Spent half a year in Manila with smallpox, 
fever, snakes, typhoons, and earthquakes, and had to 
be carried aboard ship at Hong Kong and off at 
'Frisco. Guess he's about done for all right." 

And as Howe happened to be the unfortunate 



2 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

whose place in Manila I was going to take, you know, 
I heeded the skipper's advice and looked with more 
fervor on God's country than I had for some days. 
For it was a dusty trip across country from Boston 
on the Pacific express ; and because babies are my pet 
aversion every mother's son of them aboard the train 
was quartered in my car — three families moving West 
to grow up with the country, and all of them occupy- 
ing the three sections nearest mine. I got so weary 
of the five cooing, coughing, crying " clouds-of -glory- 
trailers," that it seemed a relief at San Francisco to 
wash off the dust of the Middle "West and get aboard 
the P. M. S. Company's steamer China bound for the 
far East. 

But the Captain, like the whistle, was somewhat of 
a blower, and liked to make me and the missionaries 
aboard feel we were leaving behind all that was de- 
sirable. And how he bothered the twoscore or 
more of them bound for the up-river ports of Middle 
China ! "When, after leaving the Sandwich Islands, 
the voyage had proceeded far enough for everybody 
on the. passenger-list to get fairly well acquainted 
with his neighbors, these spreaders of the gospel fol- 
lowed the custom established by their predecessors 
and made plans for a Sunday missionary service. 
Without so much as asking leave of the skipper, they 
posted in the companion-way the following notice : 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 



Service in the Saloon, 
Sunday, 10 A.M. 

Rev. X. Y. Z. Smith, of Wang- 
kiang , China, will speak on 
mission work on the Upper 
Yangtse. 

All are invited. 



But they counted without their host. The Cap- 
tain had never schooled himself to look on mission- 
aries with favor, and he accordingly made arrange- 
ments to cross the meridian where the circle of time 
changes and a day is dropped early on Sunday 
morning. He calculated to a nicety, and as the pas- 
sengers came down to Sabbath breakfast they saw 
posted below the other notice, in big letters, the 
significant words : 





Sunday, 


Nov. 29th. 


Ship 


crosses 


180th meridian 




9.30 A.M., 


After which it 


will be Monday. 



4 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

In Yokohama and Hong Kong the wiseacres were 
free in saying they wouldn't be found dead in Ma- 
nila or the Philippines for anything. They had 
never been there, but knew all about it, and seemed 
ready to wave any one bound thither a sort of 
never'11-see-you-again farewell that was most affect- 
ing. It is these very people that have made Manila 
the side-tracked capital that it is and have scared off 
globe-trotters from making it a visit on their way to 
the Straits of Malacca and India. 

Hong Kong, the end of the China's outward run, 
bursts into view after a narrow gateway, between 
inhospitable cliffs, lets the steamer into a great bay 
which is the centre of admiration for bleak mountain- 
ranges. The city, with its epidemic of arcaded bal- 
conies, lies along the water to the left and goes step- 
ping up the steep slopes to the peak behind, on 
whose summit the signal-flags announce our arrival. 
The China has scarcely a chance to come to an- 
chor in peace before a storm of sampans bite her 
sides like mosquitoes, and hundreds of Chinawomen 
come hustling up to secure your trade, while their 
lazy husbands stay below and smoke. 

Hong Kong rather feels as if it were the " central 
exchange " for the Far East, and from the looks of 
things I judge it is. The great bay is full of deep- 
water ships, the quays teem with life, and the streets 



YESTEBDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 5 

are full of quiet bustle. It is quite enough to give 
one heart disease to shin up the hills to the res- 
idence part of the town, and it took me some time 
to find breatkjenough to tell the Spanish Consul I 
wanted him to vise my passport to Manila. 

This interesting stronghold of Old England in the 
East is fertile in descriptive matter by the whole- 
sale, but I can't rob my friends in the Philippines of 
more space than enough to chronicle the doings of a 
Chinese tailor who made me up my first suit of thin 
tweeds. Ripping off the broad margin to the Hong 
Kong Daily Press, he stood me on a box, took my 
measure with his strip of paper, making sundry little 
tears along its length, according as it represented 
length of sleeve or breadth of chest, and sent me off 
with a placid "Me makee allee same plopper tree 
day ; no fittee no takee." And I'm bound to say that 
the thin suits Tak Cheong built for $6 apiece, from 
nothing but the piece of paper full of tears, fit to far 
greater perfection than the system of measurement 
would seem to have warranted. 

The voyage from Hong Kong to Manila, 700 
miles to the southeast, is one of the worst short 
ocean-crossings in existence, and the Esmeralda, 
Captain Tayler, as she went aslant the seas rolling 
down from Japan, in front of the northeast mon- 
soon, developed such a corkscrew motion that I 



6 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

fear it will take a return trip against the other 
monsoon to untwist the feelings of her passengers. 
On the morning of the second day, however, the 
yawing ceased ; the skipper said we were under the 
lee of Luzon, the largest and most northern island of 
the Philippines, and not long after the high moun- 
tains of the shore -range loomed up off the port 
bow. From then on our chunky craft of 1,000 tons 
steamed closer to the coast and turned headland after 
headland as she poked south through schools of fly- 
ing-fish and porpoises. 

By afternoon the light-house onCorregidor appeared, 
and with a big sweep to the left the Esmeralda entered 
the Boca Chica, or narrow mouth to Manila Bay. On 
the left, the coast mountains sloped steeply up for 
some 5,000 feet, while on the right the island of 
Corregidor, with its more moderate altitude, stood 
planted in the twelve-mile opening to worry the tides 
that swept in and out from the China Sea. Beyond 
lay the Boca Grande, or wide mouth used by ships 
coming from the south or going thither, and still 
beyond again rose the lower mountains of the south 
coast. In front the Bay opened with a grand sweep 
right and left, till the shore was lost in waves of warm 
air, and only the dim blue of distant mountains showed 
where the opposite perimeter of the great circle might 
be located. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 7 

It was twenty-seven miles across the bay, and the 
sun had set with a wealth of color in the opening 
behind us before we came to anchor amid a fleet of 
ships and steanaer^olf a low-lying shore that showed 
many lights in long rows. Next morning Manila lay 
visibly before us, but failed to convey much idea of 
its size, from the fact that it stretched far back on the 
low land, thus permitting the eye to see only the 
front line of buildings and a few taller and more 
distant church-steeples. Not far in the background 
rose a high range of velvet-like looking mountains 
whose tops aspired to show themselves above the 
clouds, and on the right and left stretched flanking 
ranges of lower altitude. 

In due season my colleague came off to the anchor- 
age in a small launch, and we were soon steaming 
back up a narrow river thickly fringed with small 
ships, steamers, houses, quays, and people. It was 
piping hot at the low custom-house on the quay. 
Panting carabao — the oxen of the East — tried to find 
shade under a parcel of bamboos, shaggy goats nosed 
about for stray bits of crude sugar dropped from bags 
being discharged by coolies, piles of machinery were 
lying around promiscuously dumped into the deep 
mud of the outyards, natives with bared backs gleam- 
ing in the sun were lugging hemp or prying open 
boxes, and under-officials with sharp rods were probing 



8 YESTEEDAYS IJST THE PHILIPPINES 

flour-sacks in the search, for contraband. Spanish 
officials in full uniform, smoking cigarettes, playing 
chess, and fanning themselves in their comfortable 
seats in bent-wood rocking-chairs, were interrupted by 
our arrival, and made one boil within as they upset 
the baggage and searched for smuggled dollars. 

Here, then, was the anti-climax to the long journey 
of forty days from Boston, and those were the moments 
in which to realize the meaning of the expression 
made by the Captain of the China as she left the 
Golden Gate : " Take a last look, for you're leaving 
behind God's country." 

Before arrival, while yet the Esmeralda was steam- 
ing down the coast, I was resolved to refrain from 
judging Manila by first impressions. I felt primed 
for anything, and was bound to be neither surprised 
nor disappointed. At first, I may admit, my chin 
and collar drooped, but on meeting with my new asso- 
ciate I gave them a mental starching and stepped 
with courage into the rickety barouche that, drawn 
by two small and bony ponies, took us to the office of 
Henry W. Peabody & Co,, the only American house 
in the Philippines. 

And having entered the two upstair rooms, that 
looked out over the little Plaza de Cervantes, I was in- 
troduced to bamboo chairs, a quartette of desks, and 
half a dozen office-boys, who were rudely awakened 



i 



YESTEEDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 9 

from their morning's slumber by the scuffle of my 
heavy boots on the broad, black planks of the shining 
floors. Across the larger room, suspended from the 
ceiling, hung^the^big " punka," which seems to form 
a most important article of furniture in every tropical 
establishment. On my arrival the boy who pulled the 
string got down to work, and amid the sea-breezes 
that blew the morning's mail about, business of the 
day began. 

The first thing I noticed was that cloth instead of 
plaster formed the walls and ceilings, and seemed far 
less likely than the mixture of lime and water to fall 
into baby's crib or onto the dinner-table during those 
terrestrial or celestial exhibitions for which Manila is 
famous. For the Philippines are said to be the 
cradle of earthquake and typhoon, and in buildings, 
everywhere, construction seems to conform to the 
requirements of these much - respected " movers." 
Tiles on roofs, they say, are now forbidden, since the 
passers-by below are not willing to wear brass hel- 
mets or carry steel umbrellas to ward off a shower of 
those missiles started by a heavy shake. Galvanized 
iron is used instead, and, while detracting from the 
picturesque, has added to the security of households 
who once used to be rudely awakened from their 
slumbers by the extra weight of tile bedspreads. 

And Manila houses. Down in the town, outside 



10 YESTEKDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

the city walls, the regular, or rather irregular, Spanish 
type prevails, and nature, in her nervousness, seems 
to have done much in dispensing with lines horizontal 
and perpendicular. The buildings all have an ap- 
pearance of feebleness and senility, and look as if 
a good blow or a heavy shake would lay them flat. 
But in the old city, behind the fortifications, are heavy 
buttressed buildings of by-gone days, built when it was 
thought that earthquakes respected thick walls rather 
than thin, and the sturdy buttresses so occupy the 
narrow sidewalks that pedestrians must travel single 
file. The Spanish — so it seems — rejoice to huddle 
together in these gloomy houses of Manila proper, 
but the rich natives, half-castes, and foreigners all 
prefer the newer villas outside the narrow streets and 
musty walls ; and just as much as the Anglo-Saxon 
likes to place a grass-plot or a garden between him 
and the thoroughfare in front of his residence, so 
does the Spaniard seek to hug close to the street, and 
even builds his house to overhang the sidewalk. Save 
for carriages and dogs, the lower floors of city houses 
are generally deserted, and, on account of fevers that 
hang about in the mists of the low-ground, everyone 
takes to living on the upper story. Balconies, which 
are so elaborate that they carry the whole upper part 
of the house out over the sidewalk, are a conspicuous 
feature in all the buildings of older construction, and 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 11 

with their engaging overhang afford opportunities for 
leaning out to talk with passers-by below, or a con- 
venient vantage-ground from which to throw the 
waste water frofflwash-basins. Huge window-gratings 
thrust themselves forward from the walls of the lower 
story, and are often big enough to permit dogs and 
servants to sit in them and watch the pedestrians, 
who almost have to leave the sidewalk to get around 
these great cages. 

It may be just as well, before going farther, to say 
something about this town that is sarcastically labelled 
" Pearl of the Orient" and "Venice of the Far East" 
by poets who have only seen the oyster-shell windows 
or back doors on the Pasig on the cover-labels of 
cigar-boxes. It seems big enough to supply me with 
the pianos and provisions which kind friends sug- 
gested I bring out with me in case of need, and the 
main street, Escolta, is as busy with life and as well 
fringed with shops as a Washington street or a 
Broadway. 

Spanish, of course, is the court and commercial lan- 
guage and, except among the uneducated natives who 
have a lingo of their own or among the few members 
of the Anglo-Saxon colony — it has a monopoly every- 
where. No one can really get on without it, and even 
the Chinese come in with their peculiar pidgin variety. 

The city squats around its old friend the river 



12 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

Pasig, and shakes hands with itself in the several 
bridges that bind one side to the other. On the right 
bank of the river, coming in from the bay and passing 
up by the breakwater, lies the old walled town of 
Manila proper, whose weedy moats, ponderous draw- 
bridges, and heavy gates suggest a troubled past. Old 
Manila may be figured as a triangle, a mile on a side, 
and the dingy walls seem, as it were, to herd in a 
drove of church-steeples, schools, houses, and streets. 
The river is the boundary on the north, and the wall 
at that side but takes up the quay which runs in from 
the breakwater and carries it up to the Puente de 
Espana, the first bridge that has courage enough to 
span the yellow stream. 

The front wall runs a mile to the south along the 
bay front, starting at the river in the old fort and bat- 
tery that look down on the berth where the Esme- 
ralda lies, and is separated from the beach only by an 
old moat and the promenade of the Malecon, which, 
also beginning at the river, runs to an open plaza 
called the Luneta, a mile up the beach. The east 
wall takes up the business at that point, and wobbles 
off at an angle again till it brings up at the river for- 
tifications, just near where the Puente de Espana, al- 
ready spoken of, carries all the traffic across the Pasig. 
Thus the old city is cooped up like pool-balls, in a tri- 
angle three miles around, and the walls do as much in 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 13 

keeping out the wind as they do in keeping in the 
various unsavory odors that come from people who 
like garlic and don't take baths. Here is the cathe- 
dral — a fine old church that cost a million of money 
and was widowed of its steeple in the earthquakes of 
the '80s — and besides a lot of smaller churches are 
convent schools, the city hall, army barracks, and a 
raft of private residences. 

Opposite Old Manila, on the other bank, lies the 
business section, with the big quays lined with steam- 
ers and alive with movement. The custom-house 
and the foreign business community are close by the 
river-side, while in back are hundreds of narrow 
streets, storehouses, and shops that go to make up the 
stamping ground of the Chinese who control so large 
a part of the provincial trade. 

Everything centres at the foot of the Puente de 
Espana, which pours its perspiring flood into the nar- 
row lane of the Escolta, and people, carriages, tram- 
cars, and dust all sail in here from north, east, south, 
and west. As on the other side, the busy part of the 
section runs a mile up and down the river and a mile 
back from it, while out or up beyond come the earlier 
residential suburbs. In Old Manila, the Church seems 
to rule, but on this side the Pasig the State makes 
itself felt, from the custom-house to the governor's 
palace — a couple of miles up stream. 



14 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

As to population, Manila, in the larger sense, may 
hold 350,000 souls, besides a few dogs. Of the lot, 
call 50,000 Chinese, 5,000 Spaniards, 150 Germans, 
90 English, and 4 Americans. The rest are natives or 
half-castes of the Malay type, whose blood runs in all 
mixtures of Chinese, Spanish, and what-not propor- 
tions, and whose Chinese eyes, flat noses, and high 
cheek-bones are queer accompaniments to their Span- 
ish accents. Thus the majority of the souls in 
Manila — like the dogs — are mongrels, or mestizos, as 
the word is, and the saying goes that happy is the 
man who knows his own father. 

I spent my first night in Manila at the Spanish 
Hotel El Oriente, and it was here that I became 
acquainted with that peculiar institution, the Philip- 
pine bed. And to the newly arrived traveller its 
peculiar rig and construction make it command a 
good deal of interest, if not respect. It is a four- 
poster, with the posts extending high enough to sup- 
port a light roof, from whose eaves hang copious folds 
of deep lace. The bed-frame is strung tightly across 
with regular chair-bottom cane, and the only other 
fittings are a piece of straw matting spread over the 
cane, a pillow, and a surrounding wall of mosquito- 
netting that drops down from the roof and is tucked 
in under the matting. How to get into one of these 
cages was the first question that presented itself, and 



YESTEKDAYS IIST THE PHILIPPINES 15 

what to do with myself after I got in was the second. 
It took at least half an hour to make up my mind as 
to the^proper mode of entrance, when I was for the 
first time alone with this Philippine curiosity, and I 
couldn't make out whether it was proper to get in 
through the roof or the bottom or the side. After 
finally pulling away the netting, I found the hard 
cane bottom about as soft as the teak floor, and looked 
in vain for blankets, sheets, and mattresses. In fact, 
it seems as if I had gotten into an unfurnished house, 
and the more I thought about it the longer I stayed 
awake. At last I cut my way out of the peculiar 
arrangement, dressed, and spent the decidedly cool 
night in a long cane chair, preferring not to experi- 
ment further with the sleeping-machine until I found 
out how it worked. 

Next morning my breakfast w r as brought up by a 
native boy, and consisted of a cup of thick chocolate, 
a clammy roll, and a sort of seed-cake without any 
hole in it. How to drink the chocolate, which was 
as thick as molasses, seemed the chief question, but I 
rightly concluded that the seed-cake was put there 
to sop it out of the cup, after the fashion of blotting- 
paper. Fortified with this peculiar combination, I 
started on my second business day by trying to re- 
member in what direction the office lay, and wandered 
cityward through busy streets, often bordered with 



16 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

arcaded sidewalks, which were further shaded from 
the sun by canvas curtains. 

After beginning the morning by ordering a dozen 
suits of white sheeting from a native tailor— price 
$2.50 apiece — I was introduced to the members of the 
English Club, and began to feel more at home 
stretched out in one of the long chairs in the cool 
library. It seems that the club affords shelter and 
refreshment to its fourscore members at two widely 
separated points of the compass, one just on the banks 
of the Pasig River, where its waters, slouching down 
from the big lake at the foot of the mountains, are 
first introduced to the outlying suburbs of the city, 
and the other in the heart of the business section. 
The same set of native servants do for both depart- 
ments, since no one stays uptown during the middle 
of the day and no one downtown after business hours. 
As a result, on week-days, after the light breakfast of 
the early morning is over at the uptown building, the 
staff of waiters and assistants hurry downtown in the 
tram-cars and make ready for the noon meal at the 
other structure, returning home to the suburbs in time 
to officiate at dinner. 

At the downtown club is the 6,000-volume library, 
and after the noonday tiffin it is always customary to 
stretch out in one of the long bamboo chairs and read 
one's self to sleep. This is indeed a land where lazi- 



YESTERDAYS IlST THE PHILIPPINES 17 

ness becomes second nature. If you want a book or 
paper on the table, and they lie more than a yard or 
two from where you are located, it is not policy to 
reach for themT^ O, no ! You ring a bell twice as far 
off, take a nap while the boy comes from a distance, 
and wake up to find him handing you them with a 
graceful " Aqui, Senor ! " In fact, I have even just 
now met an English fellow r who, they tell me, took a 
barber with him on a recent trip to the southern 
provinces, to look after his scanty beard that was 
composed of no more than three or four dozen hairs, 
each of which grew one-eighth of an inch quarterly. 
On the day before Christmas one of the guest-rooms 
at the uptown club was vacated, and I moved in. The 
building is about two and a half miles out of the city, 
and its broad balcony, shaded by luxuriant palms and 
other tropical trees, almost overhangs the main river 
that splits Manila in two. The view from this tropical 
piazza is most peaceful. Opposite lie the rice-fields, 
with a cluster of native huts surrounding an old 
church, while, blue in the distance, sleeps a range of 
low mountains. To the left the river winds back up- 
country and soon loses itself in many turns among 
the foothills that later grow into the more adult 
uplifts on the Pacific Coast, while to the right it 
turns a sharp corner and slides down between broken 
rows of native huts and more elaborate bungalows. 



18 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

The club-house is long, low, and rambling. The 
reading, writing, and music rooms front on the river, 
and the glossy hard-wood floors, hand-hewn out of 
solid trees, seem to suggest music and coolness. It 
is possible to reach the city by jumping into a native 
boat at the portico on the river bank, or to go by one 
of the two-wheel gigs, called carromatas, waiting at 
the front gate, or to walk a block and take the 
tram-car which jogs down through the busy high- 
road. 

It is very difficult to absorb the points of so large 
a place at one's first introduction, so I won't go fur- 
ther now than to speak of that far-famed seaside 
promenade called the Luneta, where society takes its 
airing after the heat of the day is over. 

Imagine an elliptical plaza, about a thousand feet 
long, situated just above the low beach which borders 
the Bay, and looking over toward the China Sea. Run- 
ning around its edge is a broad roadway, bounded on 
one side by the sea-wall, and on the other by the 
green fields and bamboo-trees of the parade-grounds. 
In the centre of the raised ellipse is the band-stand, 
and on every afternoon, from six to eight, all Manila 
come here to feel the breeze, hear the music, and see 
their neighbors. Hundreds of carriages line the 
roadways, and mounted police keep them in proper 
file. The movement is from right to left, and only 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 19 

the Archbishop and the Governor-General are allowed 
to drive in the opposite direction. 

Tha gentler element, in order not to encourage a 
flow of perspiration that may melt off their complex- 
ions, take to carriages, but the sterner sex prefer to 
walk up and down, crowd around the band-stand, or 
sit along the edge of the curbing in chairs rented for 
a couple of coppers. Directly in front lies the great 
Bay, with the sun going down in the Boca Chica, 
between the hardly visible island of Oorregidor and 
the main land, thirty miles away. To the rear 
stretches the parade-ground, backed up by clumps of 
bamboos and the distant mountains beyond. To the 
right lie the corner batteries and walls of Old Manila, 
and to the left the attractive suburb of Ermita, with 
the stretch of shore running along toward the naval 
station of Cavite, eleven miles away. To take a 
chair, watch the people walking to and fro, and see 
the endless stream of smart turn-outs passing in slow 
procession; to hear a band of fifty pieces render 
popular and classic music with the spirit of a Sousa 
or a Reeves, is to doubt that you are in a capital 
8,000 miles from Paris and 11,000 miles from New 
York. Footmen with tall hats, in spotless white 
uniforms, grace the box-seats of the low-built victorias, 
while tastefully dressed Spanish women or wealthy 
half-castes recline against the soft cushions and take 



20 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

for granted the admiration of those walking up and 
down the mall. 

The splendidly trained artillery-band, composed 
entirely of natives, but conducted by a Spaniard, plays 
half a dozen selections each evening, and here is a 
treat that one can have every afternoon of the year, 
free of charge. There are no snow-drifts or cold 
winds to mar the performance, and, except during the 
showers and winds of the rainy season, it goes on 
without interruption. 

After the music is over the carriages rush off in 
every direction, behind smart-stepping little ponies 
that get over the ground at a tremendous pace, and 
the dinner-hour is late enough not to rob one of 
those pleasant hours at just about sunset. There 
are no horses in Manila — all ponies, and some of 
them are so small as to be actually insignificant. 
They are tremendously tough little beasts, however, 
and stand more heat, work, and beating than most 
horses of twice their size. 

Our Christmas dinner at the club has just ended, 
and from the bill of fare one would never suspect 
he was not at the Waldorf or the Parker House. 
Long punkas swung to and fro over the big tables, 
small serving boys in bare feet rushed hither and 
thither with meat and drink, corks popped, the smart 
breeze blew jokes about, and everyone unbent. 







o 






3 
CL 



YESTERDAYS IIST THE PHILIPPINES 21 

Soups, fish, joints, entrees, removes, hors-d'oeuvres, 
mince-pies, plum-puddings, and all the delicacies to 
be found in cooler climes had their turn, as did a 
variety of liquid courses. Singing, speeches, and 
music followed the more material things, and every- 
one was requested to take some part in the perform- 
ance. By the time the show was over the piano was 
dead-beat and everybody hoarse from singing by the 
wrong method. 



n 

Shopping at the " Botica Inglesa"— The Chit System — Celebrating 
New Year's Eve — Manila Cooking Arrangements — Floors and 
Windows — Peculiarities of the Tram-car Service — Roosters Ev- 
erywhere — Italian Opera — Philippine Music — The Mercury at 74° 
and an Epidemic of " Grippe " — Fight Between a Bull and a Tiger 
— A Sorry Fiasco—Carnival Sunday. 

January 7th. 

My third Sunday in Manila is a cool breezy day, 
with fresh winds blowing down from the mountains. 
The weather has lately been as temperate as one 
could wish, and has corresponded to some of our soft 
spring conditions. From noon until three o'clock 
has usually seemed warm, but the mornings have 
made walking pleasant, the afternoons have given op- 
portunities for tennis, and the evenings have hinted 
that an overcoat would not be amiss. One could 
hardly ask for any more comfortable place to live in 
than Manila as it stands to-day, and although sani- 
tary appliances are most primitive, the city seems to 
be healthy and without noisome pestilence. 

During the holiday season, just over, foreign busi- 
ness has been suspended and everyone socially in- 
clined. Shopping has been in vogue, and on one of 

22 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 23 

my expeditions for photographic materials I was in- 
troduced to the " Botica Inglesa," or English chem- 
ist's shop, which seems to be the largest variety-store 
in town. ^Here it is possible to buy anything from a 
glass of soda to a full-fledged lawn-mower, including 
all the intermediates that reach from tooth-brushes 
to photographic cameras. 

And speaking of shopping brings me to the " chit " 
system, which has been such a curse to the Far East. 
In making purchases, no one pays cash for anything, 
since the heavy Mexican dollars — which are the only 
currency of the islands — are too heavy to lug around 
in the thin suits made of white sheeting. One simply 
signs an " I. O. TJ." for the amount of the bill in any 
shop that he may choose to patronize, and thinks no 
more about it till at the end of the month all the 
"chits" which bear his name are sent around for 
collection. 

Result: one never feels as if he were spending 
anything until the first day of the incoming month 
ushers in a host of these big or little reminders. If 
your chits at one single shop run into large amounts, 
the collector generally brings along with him a coolie 
or a wheelbarrow with which to lug away the weight 
of dollars that you pour into his hands, and when 
two or three collectors come in together the office 
reminds one of a money- 'changer's. Counterfeit 



24 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

money is so prevalent that one after the other of 
your callers bites the silver or drops it on the floor 
to detect lead, and to listen to the resulting sound is 
not to feel complimented by their opinion of your 
integrity. So it goes, many of the shop-keepers 
being swindled out of their dues by debtors who 
choose to skip off rather than to pay, and waking up 
at the end of the month to find their supposed profits 
existing only in the chits whose signers have skedad- 
dled to Hong Kong or Singapore. 

New Year's Eve was celebrated with due hilarity 
and elaborate provisions. The club bill of fare was 
remarkable, and when it is realized there are no stoves 
in Manila, the wonder is that the cooking is so com- 
plex, A Manila stove is no more nor less than a 
good-sized earthen jar, shaped something like an old 
shoe. The vamp of the shoe represents the hearth ; 
the opening in front, the place for putting in the 
small sticks of wood ; and the enclosing upper, the 
rim on which rests the single big pot or kettle. In 
a well-regulated kitchen, there may be a dozen of 
these stoves, one for each course, and their cost being 
only a peseta, it is a simple matter to keep a few 
extra ones on hand in the bread-closet. And so, as 
one goes through the streets where native huts pre- 
dominate, he sees a family meal being cooked in sec- 
tions, and is forced to admire the complexity of the 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 25 

greasy dishes that are evolved from so simple a con- 
trivance. 

As the Manila cooking arrangements are rude, so 
I suspect are the pantry's dish-washing opportunities. 
I really should hesitate to enter even our club T kitchen, 
for certain dim suggestions which are conveyed to the 
senses from spoons and forks, and certain plate sur- 
faces that would calm troubled waters if hung from a 
ship's side, all hint at unappetizing sights. All in 
all, the less one sees of native cooking, in transitu, the 
greater will one's appetite be. 

I had expected an early introduction to earth- 
quakes, but none have occurred so far, and I am 
almost tempted to get reckless. Soon after my arrival 
I was inclined to put my chemical bottles in a box of 
sawdust, empty part of the water out of my pitcher, 
and pack my watch in cotton- wool in anticipation of 
some nocturnal disturbance. For the old stagers who 
saw the city fall to pieces back in the '80's deem it 
their duty to alarm the new arrival, and almost turn 
pale when a heavy dray rolls by over the cobblestones 
in the street near the club, or make ready to fly out- 
of-doors at the first suspicion of vibration. 

A word or two more about the floors in Manila 
houses. I don't suppose there is a soft-wood tree in 
the islands, and as a result one sees some very inter- 
esting hard- wood productions. The floors come under 



26 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

this category. Bough-hewn as they are — out of huge 
hand-sawed hard- wood planks — they are models. By 
certain processes of polishing with banana leaves and 
greasy rags, they are made to shine like genius itself, 
and give such a clean, cool air to the houses that one 
is compelled to regard them with admiration. In fact, 
there is a certain charm in Manila about many speci- 
mens of hand-work that one encounters everywhere. 
The stilted regularities — as our good professor used 
to say — of machine-made articles are frequently con- 
spicuous by their absence, and instead one sees the 
inequalities, the lack of exact repetition, the infor- 
mality of lines that are not just perpendicular or 
horizontal, all of which make up the charm of work 
that is handmade, that reflects the movements of a 
living arm and mind rather than those of a wheel or 
a lever. 

The curious windows that are everywhere are 
likewise instructive. Like the blinds, they slide in 
grooves on the railings of the balconies, and serve to 
shut out the weather from the interior. They consist 
of frames containing a multitude of small lattice- 
work squares, into which are placed thin, flat, trans- 
lucent sea-shells which admit light, but are not look- 
throughable. We have all heard of shell-roads, but 
never of shell-windows, and one misses the presence of 
glass until he has got accustomed to a Manila house, 




o 



ca 









3 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 27 

whose sliding sides are one vast window that is rarely 
closed. 

Manila streets, outside of the city proper, are 
smooth, hard, and well shaded by the arching bam- 
boos. They are already proving attractive to the bi- 
cycle, which, though very expensive out here at the 
antipodes, is growing in favor, especially among the 
wealthier half-castes, or mestizos. 

Tram-car service is slow, but pretty generally good. 
The car is a thing by itself, as is the one lean pony 
that pulls it. It takes one man to drive and one to 
work the whip, and if the wind blows too hard, ser- 
vice is generally suspended. The conductor carries 
a small valise suspended from his neck, and whistles 
through his lips " up-hill " to stop, and " down-hill" 
as the starting-sign. The usual notice, " Smoking al- 
lowed on the three rear seats only," is absent, for 
everyone smokes, even to the conductor, who gener- 
ally drops the ash off a 15-for-a-cent cigarette into 
your lap as he hands you a receipt for your dos 
centavos. The chief rule of the road says : 

" This car has seats for twelve persons, and places 
for eight on each platform. Passengers are requested 
to stand in equal numbers only on both platforms, to 
prevent derailment." 

And so if there are four " fares " on the front and 
six on the back platform, somebody has to stumble 



28 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

forward to equalize the weight. No one is allowed 
to stand inside, and if the car contains its quota of 
passengers, the driver hangs out the sign, "Lleno" 
(full), and doesn't stop even for the Archbishop. It 
is just as well, perhaps, to sit at the front end of 
the car if you are afraid of smallpox, for the other 
morning a Philippine mamma brushed into a seat 
holding a scantily clothed babe well covered with 
evidences of that disease. One sympathizes with the 
single pony that does the pulling as he sees thirty 
people besides the car in his load, and it is no un- 
common thing on a slight rise or sharp turn for all 
hands to get off and help the vehicle over the diffi- 
culty. The driver holds the whip by the wrong end 
and lets the heavy one come down with double force 
on the terribly tough hide of the motive power. 
Aside from tram-cars some of these little beasts, 
however, are possessed of great speed, and with a 
reckless cochero in charge, it is no uncommon sight 
to see three or four turnouts come tearing down the 
street abreast, full tilt, clearing the road, killing dogs 
and roosters, and making one's hair stand on end. 

Speaking of roosters, they are the native dog in 
the Philippines. The inhabitants pet and coddle 
them, smooth down their plumage, clean their combs, 
or pull out their tail-feathers to make them fight, to 
their heart's content, and it is a fact that these cack- 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 29 

ling glass-eaters really seem to show affection for 
their proprietors, in as great measure as they ex- 
hibit hatred for their brothers. Every native has his 
fighting-cock, which is reared with the greatest care 
until he has shown sufficient prowess to entitle him 
to an entrance into the cock-pit. In case of fire, the 
rooster is the first thing rescued and removed to a 
place of safety, for babies — common luxuries in the 
Philippines — are a secondary consideration and more 
easily duplicated than the feathered biped. It is al- 
most impossible to walk along any street in the 
suburban part of the town without seeing dozens of 
natives trudging along with roosters under their arms, 
which are being talked to and petted to distraction. 
At every other little roadside hut, an impromptu battle 
will be going on between two birds of equal or unequal 
merit, the two proprietors holding their respective 
roosters by the tails in order that they may not come 
into too close quarters. The cock-pits, where gath- 
erings are held on Thursdays and Sundays, are large 
enclosures covered with a roof of thatch sewed on- 
to a framework of bamboo ; they are open on all sides, 
and banked up with tiers of rude seats that surround 
a sawdust ring in the centre. Outside the gates to 
the flimsy structure sit a motley crowd of women, 
young and old, selling eatables whose dark, greasy 
texture beggars description, while here and there in 



30 YESTERDAYS I1ST THE PHILIPPINES 

the open spaces a couple of natives will be giving 
their respective roosters a sort of preliminary trial 
with each other. As the show goes on inside, shouts 
and applause resound at every opportunity, and at 
the close of the performance a multitude of two- 
wheeled gigs carry off the victors with their spoils, 
while the losers trudge home through the dust on 
foot. 

Other familiar street-scenes consist of Chinese 
barbers, who carry around a chair, a pair of scissors, 
and a razor wherever they go, and stop to give you 
a shave or hair-cut at any part of the block; or 
Chinese ear-cleaners, who scoop out of those organs 
some of the unprintable epithets hurled by one native 
at another. Cascades of slops not uncommonly de- 
scend into the street as one walks along beneath a 
slightly overhanging second story of some of the 
houses, and one is impressed, if not wet, by this favor- 
ite method of laying the street-dust. 

Besides the daily afternoon music on the Luneta, a 
full-fledged Italian opera troupe has come to town 
and has begun to give performances in the Teatro 
Zorilla. " Carmen " and " The Cavalleria Rusticana " 
are on the bill for this week, and many other of the 
old standbys are going to have their turn later. 

In respect to music, sidetracked though it is, Ma- 
nila seems to be more favored than her sister capitals 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 31 

in the Far East, and everyone appears to be able to 
play on something. Such of the native houses as are 
too frail to support pianos shelter harps, violins, and 
other stringed instruments, while some of the more 
expensive structures contain the whole selection. 
Of an evening — in the suburbs — it is no uncommon 
thing to hear the strains of a well-played Spanish 
march issuing from under the thatch of a rickety hut, 
or to find an impromptu concert going on in the lit- 
tle tram-car which is bringing home a handful of native 
youth with their guitars or mandolins. Every district 
has its band,' some of the instruments in which are of- 
ten made out of empty kerosene-cans, and the nights 
resound with tunes from all quarters. In fact, the 
Philippine band is one of the chief articles of export 
from Manila, and groups of natives with their cheap 
instruments are shipped off to Japan, India, and the 
Spice Islands, to carry harmony into the midst of 
communities where music is uncultivated. All in all, 
it is extremely curious that out of all the peoples of 
the Far East the Filipinos are the only ones possess- 
ing a natural talent for music, and that the islands 
to-day stand out unique from among all the sur- 
rounding territory as being the home of a musical 
race, who do not make the night as hideous with 
weird beatings of tom-toms as they do poetic with 
soft waltzes coaxed from gruff trombones. 



32 YESTEEDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

January 18th. 

Manila is pretty well, thanks. The weather has 
been cool and comfortable. Showers have come every 
day or two to lay the dust, and one conld not want a 
more salubrious condition of things. The sunsets 
from the Luneta have been more than pyrotechnic, and 
I now believe that nowhere do you see such displays 
of color as in the Orient, Land of the Sunrise. Dur- 
ing these three weeks of my stay, so far there have 
been five holidays, and we have had ample time to 
take afternoon walks up the beach, or play tennis at 
the club, or indulge in moonlight rows on the Pasig. 

A week ago on the island just opposite the club, 
where lies a good-sized village, containing an old 
church, there was a religious festival, which lasted all 
the week. This was the Fiesta of Pandacan, and all 
the natives for miles around came pouring down by 
our veranda, in bancas and barges, on their way 
across the river. Every night during the week, bands 
of music played on one side of the stream and on the 
other side, and then crossed to their respective oppo- 
sites, playing in transitu, and then setting up shop on 
shore again. Then there were fireworks, bombs, and 
rockets galore, so that the early night was alive with 
noise and sparks. On the evening of the grand wind- 
up we crossed over to see the sights, in one of the 
usual hollowed- out tree-trunk ferryboats. Crowds of 







^ 



a. 






YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 33 

gayly dressed natives surged around the plaza, near 
the old church, while everywhere along the edges 
squatted old men and women, cooking all sorts of 
greasy " chow " on those peculiar Philippine stoves 
described in the last chapter. Everybody smoked, 
as well as the pots and kettles, and the air was there- 
fore foggy. The little, low-thatched houses were 
jauntily decorated with lanterns and streamers, and 
at all the open fronts leaned out rows of grinning 
natives. 

Here and there were small "tiendas" or little 
booths, where cheap American toys, collar-buttons, 
pictures, and little figures of the Saviour were sold, 
and great was the hubbub. The houses, as well as 
the people, are very low of stature, and as we walked 
along the narrow, almost cunning streets, our shoul- 
ders level with the eaves of many of the shanties, and 
above the heads of many of the people, we felt indeed 
like giants. Many were the pianos in those native 
huts, and peculiar mixtures of strikingly decent play- 
ing fell upon the ear from all sides. 

The whole circus wound up with a grand pyrotech- 
nical illumination of the old church from base to 
tower, and a score of loud explosions, caused by the 
setting off of many dozen bombs at the same time, 
made up in noise what the religious celebration 
lacked in spirituality. Then all the bands came back 



34 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

and played their lungs out as they crossed the river, 
and all the people rushed for bancas, and came chat- 
tering home. Thus did this pretty little religious 
show consume, in noise and sparks, the contributions 
of a very long time. 

The grand opera company which is here is doing 
remarkably well, and " Faust" was given the other 
evening to a crowded house. The theatre Zorilla is 
round, like a circus, and in the centre of the ring sit 
the holders of our regular orchestra seats, facing the 
stage, which chops off the segment of the circle 
opposite the main entrance. In a rim surrounding 
the central arena stretches the single row of boxes, a 
good deal like small open sheep-pens, separated 
from each other only by insignificant railings. Next 
comes the surrounding aisle, and in the broad outside 
section of the circle, rising up in steep tiers, are the 
seats for the natives and gallery gods, who invariably 
bring their lunch with them, to pass away the time 
during the long intermissions. The orchestra is a 
native one, led by an Italian conductor, and doesn't 
tuck its shirt into its trousers. The musicians, who 
battle with the difficult score, grind out their music 
quite as successfully as some of our home performers, 
who would scorn the dark faces and flying shirt-tails 
of their Philippine brethren. 

During the performance the management intro- 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 35 

duced a ballet, whose members were native Filipinas. 
It was too laughable. The faces and arms of the 
women who formed the corps seemed first to have 
been covered with mucilage, and then besprinkled 
with flour in order to bring the dark -brown complex- 
ion up to the softer half-tints of the Italian perform- 
ers. The native lady, as a rule, is unacquainted with 
French shoes or high heels, slippers being the 
every-day equipment, and when these flowery beings 
came forward on to the stage, saw the huge audience, 
and tried to go through the mazes of the dance in 
European footgear, they felt entirely snarled up, even 
if they didn't look more than half so. But this only 
served to keep the audience in a good humor, and 
everybody seemed to enjoy both the singing and the 
deviltry of Mephistopheles, whose part was well 
taken. The waits between the acts were long, and 
the drop-curtain was covered with barefaced adver- 
tisements of dealers in pills, hats, and carriages. But 
there were cool little cafes across the roadway run- 
ning by the theatre, and one forgot the delay in the 
pleasure of being refreshed by Spanish chocolate and 
crisp bunuelos. 

In front of the main entrance to the theatre stood 
two firemen, with hose in hand, ready to play on 
anything as soon as the orchestra stopped or a lamp 
fell, but otherwise nothing was particularly strange. 



36 YESTEKDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

The whole structure was oil-lighted with rickety 
chandeliers, which shed a dangerous though brilliant 
glare down upon a large audience of most exquisite- 
ly dressed Spanish people, mestizos and foreigners. 
Pretty little flower-girls wandered about trying to 
dispose of their wares to the rather over-dressed 
dudes of the upper half-caste 400, and their mammas 
often followed them around to assist in making sales. 
If it begins to rain in the afternoon, before the per- 
formance, everybody understands that the show is 
to be postponed, provided clearing conditions do not 
follow, and those who hold tickets are, as a rule, 
grateful not to be obliged to risk their horses and 
their starched clothes to the treatment of a possible 
downpour. 

The Luneta is still a close rival to the opera, and 
each afternoon a dozen of us will generally meet there 
to refresh ourselves with the music and the passing 
show. Toward sundown, in the afternoons, of late, 
the big guns in the batteries up along the walls of 
Old Manila, hard by, have been used in long-dis- 
tance sea target-practice, and it has been interesting, 
on the way from the office to the promenade, to walk 
along the beach and see the cannon-balls zip over the 
water and slump into it miles from their destination. 
The same target serves every afternoon, and seems 
perfectly safe from being hit. I wish I could say as 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 37 

much for the fleet of American ships that are lying 
off the bre'akwater, at the anchorage. 

February 8th. 

It seems peculiar to see the moon standing directly 
overhead o'nights, and casting a shadow of one's self 
that is without meaning. I never yet realized we had 
so little shape before, looking from above, as when I 
saw this new species of shadow the other night, and 
was really sorry that the angels never had a chance 
to look at us from a better point of view. 

To be politic, and begin with the weather as usual, 
a cold snap lately has given everyone the "grippe." 
The mercury actually stood at 74° all one day, and 
couldn't be coaxed to go higher. Think of the suffer- 
ing that such low temperature would occasion among 
a people who have no furnaces or open fireplaces. 
You may think I am facetious, but 74° in the Phil- 
ippines means a great deal to people who are always 
accustomed to 95°. 

The opera -talk continues, and "Fra Diavolo" 
was most successfully performed to a crowded house 
the other evening. " The Barber of Seville " was given 
Sunday night with equal eclat, and the prima donna 
was a star of the first water, whose merits were rec- 
ognized in the presentation of some huge flower- 
pieces, probably paid for by herself. But the opera 



38 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

has had a rival, and those who are not so musically 
inclined have spent most of their spare moments in 
discussing the great bull and tiger fight which took 
place Sunday afternoon. 

It was a queer show, and not altogether edifying. 
The old bull-ring, squatting out in the rice-fields of 
Ermita suburb, was to be used for the last time, and 
the occasion was to be of unusual interest, since the 
flaming posters announced, in grown-up letters : 



STEUGGLE BETWEEN WILD BEASTS. 



Grand Fight to the Death between Full-blooded 

Spanish Bull, and Boyal Bengal Tigee, 

Direct from the Jungles of India. 



For days before the show came off, conversation in 
the cafes along the Escolta invariably turned to the 
subject of the coming exhibition, and it was evident 
that the managers fully intended both to reap a large 
harvest of heavy dollars and to wind up the career of 
the bull-ring association in a blaze of blood and glory. 

The steaming Sunday afternoon found everybody 
directing his steps toward the wooden structure which 
consisted of a lot of rickety seats piled up around a 
circular arena. The reserved sections were covered 
with a light roof, to keep off the afternoon sun, but 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 39 

the bleaching-boards for those that held only "bil- 
letes de sol " were exposed to the blinding glare. The 
audience, a crowd of three thousand persons, with 
dark faces showing above suits of white sheeting, 
found the centre of the ring ornamented with a huge 
iron cage some two rods square, while off at the sides 
were smaller cages containing the "jieras" or wild 
beasts. 

The show opened amid breathless excitement, with 
an exhibition of panthers, and a man dressed in pink 
tights ate dinner in the big cage, after setting off a 
bunch of firecrackers under one of the "jieras" who 
didn't seem inclined to wake up enough to lick his 
chops and make-believe masticate somebody. The 
daring performer lived to digest his glass of water, 
with one cracker thrown in, and a deer was next in- 
troduced into the enclosure. The panther, at com- 
mand of the keeper to get to business, seemed unwil- 
ling to attack his gentle foe, and on continued hissing 
from the big audience, the two animals were at length 
withdrawn. 

Then great shouts of " El toro ! El toro ! " arose, 
as off at the small gate, at one side, appeared the 
bull, calmly walking forward, under the guidance of 
two natives, who didn't wear any shoes. And re- 
newed applause arose, as the small heavy cage con- 
taining the E. B. tiger was rolled up to a sliding- 



40 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

door of the central structure. The bull was shoved 
into the iron jail, the gate closed, a dozen or more 
bunches of firecrackers were set off in the small box 
holding the tiger, in order to waken him up, the 
slide connecting the two was withdrawn, and, with a 
deafening roar, the great Indian cat rushed forth and 
tried to swallow a man who was standing outside the 
bars waving a heated pitchfork. The bull stood 
quietly in one corner wagging his tail, and after 
blinking his eyes once or twice, proceeded to ex- 
amine his antagonist, in a most friendly spirit. In 
fact, there seemed to be no hard feeling at all be- 
tween the two beasts, and the tiger only wanted to 
get at the gentleman outside the cage, not at the 
bull. The audience howled, jeered at the tiger, bet 
on the bull, and criticised the man with the pitch- 
fork as he gave the tiger several hard pokes in the 
ribs. This served to anger the beast so that he 
finally did make a dive at the bull, and promptly 
found himself tossed into the air. But as he came 
down, he hung on to the bull's nose, and dug his 
claws into the tough hide. Curiously enough, the 
bull didn't seem to mind that in the least, and the 
two stood perfectly still for some five minutes, locked 
in close quarters. 

To make a long story short, there occurred four 
or five of these mild attacks, always incited by 




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o 




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YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 41 

the man with the pitchfork, during which the bull 
stepped on the tiger, making him howl with pain, 
and the latter badly bit the former on the legs and 
nose. After the fourth round, both beasts seemed 
to be in want of a siesta. It was growing dark, and 
the dissatisfied audience cried for another bull and 
another tiger. The first animal was finally dragged 
away, after the tiger had retreated to his cage, and a 
fresh bull with more spirit was introduced. Now, 
however, the tiger was less game than ever, and no 
amount of firecrackers or pitchforkings could induce 
him to stir from the small cage. He seemed far too 
sensible, and literally appeared to be the possessor 
of an asbestos skin. 

It had now got pretty dark, and the audience joined 
in the pandemonium of howls coming from the vari- 
ous cages. People began to light matches to see 
their programmes, and the circus-ring looked as if it 
were filled with fireflies. Then the programmes 
themselves were ignited for more light, and cries of 
" Give us back our money," " What's the matter with 
the tiger?" and others of a less printable order, arose. 
Men jumped into the ring, but the tiger refused to 
move for anybody. In the hope of stirring things up, 
a couple of panthers were again hastily wheeled up 
and pushed into the cage, where the bull was stand- 
ing with an expression of wonder on his face. But 



42 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

the bull merely licked one panther on the nose and 
wagged his tail at the other, while the show was de- 
clared off on account of darkness. Then everybody 
filed out in disgust, and the man with the tiger, 
panthers, and pitchfork made arrangements to sail 
for foreign shores by the first steamer. Such was 
the last performance in the Plaza de Toros de Ma- 
nila. 

It was a pleasant contrast after the fight to ad- 
journ to the Luneta. The day was Carnival Sunday, 
and all the young children of the community were 
rigged up in many sorts of inconceivable gowns. 
Clowns and ballet-dancers, devils and angels, all 
wandered up and down the smooth walk, and the 
crowd was immense. Numbers of the older people 
also took part, and many of the smart traps were 
occupied with grotesque figures. The artillery-band 
rendered some of its finest selections. The ships off 
in the bay were almost completely reflected in the 
calm water. The mountains rose blue, like velvet, 
in the distance, and a red glow in the Boca Chica 
told where the sun had gone down for us, only to 
rise on the distant snows of New England. 



Ill 

A Philippine Valet— The Three Days Chinese New Year-— Marionettes 
and Minstrels at Manila— Yankee Skippers—Furnishing a Bunga- 
low — Rats, Lizards, and Mosquitoes— A New Arrival— Pony- 
Races in Santa Mesa — Cigars and Cheroots — Servants— Cool 
Mountain Breezes— House-snakes— Cost of Living — Holy Week. 

February 16th. 
News to begin with. I have engaged a Philippine 
valet, price $4.50 per month ; a man with a wife, two 
children, and a fighting-cock, who buys all his better 
half's pink calico gowns and all the food for the party 
on this large salary. It is a wonder what revolutions 
have taken place in my wardrobe. My heavy clothes, 
already' grown musty from disuse, have been taken 
out, sun-dried, and laid carefully away. I no longer 
have to decide what to wear each morning, for it is 
settled for me beforehand. Everything that my 
"boy" wishes me to don is laid out on a chair during 
my early pilgrimage to the bath, and all that is neces- 
sary to do on my return is to get into them. It is quite 
a luxury, and I shall certainly be inclined to bring 
this cheap gentleman back with me when I return to 
Boston. My neckties, which have hitherto snarled 

themselves up in the corner of a drawer, now are 

43 



44 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

hanging from a neat clothes-line, side by side. My 
books and papers on the centre table are arranged 
with unnatural formality, and the smaller articles, 
such as lead-pencils, buttons, pin-cushions, are all 
adjusted in definite geometrical formation. At break- 
fast and dinner in the club-house I no longer have 
to whistle to be waited on, for my slave is always be- 
hind the chair, ready to spill the soup on my coat or 
pass the plum-pudding. These serving-boys all be- 
long to the Tagalog race, which seems to include in 
its numbers most of the native inhabitants in Manila 
and the adjacent towns. They all have straight, thick 
black hair, speak their peculiar Tagalog language, and 
only pick up enough Spanish to carry them through 
the performance of their simple duties. 

And still the holidays, more or less, continue. 
About this time of year there is one a week, and just 
now the Chinese New Year occupies about three 
days. The business part of the town is quiet. All 
the Chinese merchants have driven off on a pic- 
nic, and it is impossible to hire carriages of any sort. 

Manila, on the whole, is waking up, and besides 
the opera we now have the marionette troupe, some- 
thing entirely new to the average citizen. It seems 
there are four sisters travelling around the world with 
their little collection of string-pulled puppets, giving 
exhibitions in all the larger centres. Their fame had 






YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 45 

preceded them, and so the other night when the 
doors of the Teatro Filipino were thrown open, 
a huge crowd assembled to see the performance. 
The stage was a fairly large one, but so arranged 
optically that it made the figures appear larger 
than they really were. The actors (puppets) were 
remarkable for their lifelikeness, and if one had 
not seen the strings stretching upward he would 
have taken them to be animate beings. Their 
costumes were complete and elaborate in every 
particular. First came a tight-rope walker, then 
an acrobat balancing a pair of chairs, and then 
Old Mother Hubbard, out of whose voluminous pet- 
ticoats jumped half a dozen little men and women, 
all of whom danced and cut up as if they were really 
reasoning bipeds instead of material, loose -jointed, 
wax-faced dolls. Old Mamma was especially good, and 
as she stirred up her little children with a long staff, 
looked at first this one and then that, shook her head, 
pointed her finger, and danced with the others, she 
brought down the house with applause. 

Later on came a minstrel troupe, with two end-men, 
a leader who waved a baton, a harpist, and two other 
musicians. They all played, and the end-men cracked 
jokes. Next came a clog-dance between two darkies, 
and it was difficult to believe that they were not 
alive. Further on came a bulldog, which grabbed a 



46 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

policeman by the nether breeches and pulled a huge 
piece out of them ; a bull, who chased a farmer and 
threw him over a rail fence (this took wonderfully 
well, for the Spaniards go crazy over anything with a 
bull in it) ; then a boarding-house scene, with a fold- 
ing-bed that shut up its occupants inside; next, a 
balloon ascension, in which a man on the ground was 
suddenly caught up into the air by an anchor thrown 
out from the balloon; then the death of the two 
aeronauts, who fall from a dizzy height ; next, a ride 
in a donkey-cart by two lovers, who find themselves 
run away with and get snarled up on the wagon, to be 
kicked black and blue by the donkey. Finally came 
a very complete little play of " Bluebeard," with com- 
plete scenery, costumes, and ballet. All of the scen- 
ery was of the lightning-change sort, and the Span- 
iards, mestizos, and natives in the audience sat and 
looked on with open-mouthed wonder, too aston- 
ished to laugh, too senseless to cry, and able but to 
clothe their faces with expressions of wonder. 

To change the subject rather abruptly, the captain 
of the Esmeralda, the little steamer on which I came 
from Hong Kong, has been good enough to ask me 
on board his vessel to tiffin as often as she comes 
into port. As Captain Tayler's table is noted both 
for its excellence and profusion, the very few of us 
who comprise the American colony, as well as all the 




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ex. 
O 









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YESTEKDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 47 

Englishmen in town, always covet an invitation to 
spend Sunday in his company and enjoy various 
dishes that are not to be procured in Manila mar- 
kets. 

Besides the several steamers that ply between 
ports on the neighboring coast, there is hoys a large 
fleet of American ships at anchor in the bay, and 
our office, which shelters the only American firm in 
the Philippines, is a great centre for the various 
Yankee, nasal-twanged skippers, who, dressed in hot- 
looking, ready-made tweeds, come ashore without 
their collars to ask questions about home topics and 
read newspapers six weeks old. They delight to en- 
joy the sea-breezes generated by our big punka, 
and only leave the office on matters of urgent neces- 
sity. Several of the captains have their whole fam- 
ilies with them, and one, who is especially well-to- 
do, owns his own ship, carries along a bright tutor, 
who is preparing some of the skipper's sons for col- 
lege, and has transformed the vessel into a veritable 
institution of learning. On nearly every evening 
the w r hole fleet in a body go to some one ship, sing 
songs and have refreshments, and the other night 
Governor Eobie was the host. Being invited to 
partake of the festivities, we two Yankees went off 
into the bay at about sunset, ate a regulation New 
England dinner, with rather too much weight to it 



48 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

for hot climates, and met all the belles of the fleet. 
The moon overhead was full, and with a good piano, 
violin, hand-organ, and a couple of ocarinas, giving 
vent to sweet sounds, we had an impromptu dance 
on the quarter-deck. We stayed out on the ship of 
our host and hostess all night. They apologized 
because the bunks in the state-rooms assigned to us 
were so hard, little realizing that we couldn't sleep 
worth a continental on account of their being so 
ridiculously soft after our Philippine cane arrange- 
ments. 

Everybody is talking horse now, and business will 
be at a standstill during the first few days of the 
coming month, when the pony races take place at the 
suburban course in Santa Mesa. As a result, every 
afternoon that some of us do not go rowing or play 
tennis, we adjourn to the race-track, and, in company 
with groups of Spaniards and wealthy mestizos, watch 
the smart ponies circle around the track. 

And, speaking of the race-course, I have just made 
arrangements with one of my new friends to take a 
bungalow situated on a low rise that backgrounds the 
track at the quarter-mile post. It stands, prettily 
shaded by bamboo-trees, on practically the first bit 
of upland that later grows into the lofty mountains 
of the interior, and the view off over the race-course 
and low-lying paddy-fields, squared off into sections, 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 49 

toward the city, is most picturesque. On another side 
we look off over the winding river toward the moun- 
tains, which hardly appear five miles away, and still 
another view is a bamboo grove, against which is 
backed up our little stable with various outbuildings, 
including the kitchen. A broad veranda runs entirely 
around the main building, where the living-rooms are 
located, and Venetian roll-blinds let down from the 
piazza-roof keep off the afternoon sun. 

Yesterday I had my first experience in making 
extensive purchases of furniture, and was interested 
to see about twelve coolies start off from the city 
toward our country residence, three miles away, 
loaded down with beds, tables, chairs, and other 
articles. Four of them started off later on with the 
upright piano balanced on a couple of cross-sticks 
resting on their shoulders, and trotted the whole dis- 
tance without sitting down to play the " Li Hung 
Chang March " more than twice. These living carriers 
rather take the place of express wagons in the East, 
and a long caravan of furniture-laden Celestials, sol- 
emnly going along through the highway at a jog- 
trot, is no uncommon sight. We shall need dishes, 
knives, pots and kettles, and a whole World's Fair 
of trumpery, before we get started, and I shall have to 
be busy with a Spanish dictionary, in order to get 
familiar with the right names for the right things. 



50 YESTERDAYS IJST THE PHILIPPINES 

You have asked me how the mosquitoes fare upon 
the newly arrived foreigner. To tell the truth, I have 
not seen more than half a dozen since coming to 
Manila, and those all sang in tune. Everybody sleeps 
under nettings, of course, but so far I have not seen as 
many biters flying around at night as there are in 
the United States of America. To be sure, one sees 
a good many lizards hanging by the eye-teeth to the 
walls, or walking about unconcernedly up-side-down 
on the ceilings, but they do good missionary work by 
devouring the host of smaller bugs, and it is one of 
our highest intellectual pursuits here in Manila to 
stretch out in a long chair and go to sleep gazing 
upward at these enterprising bug-catchers pursuing 
their vocation. And, now and then, from some 
piazza-roof or ceiling will drop on your face a so- 
called hairy caterpillar whose promenade on one's 
epidermis will cause it to swell up in great welts that 
close one's eyes and ruffle the temper. 

Eats are more numerous than mosquitoes, and the 
other day, on my opening a drawer in some of our 
office furniture, three jumped out. The office was 
transformed into an impromptu race-course, and all 
hands were called to take part in the slaughter. But 
Manila doors are loose- jointed, and the rodents 
escaped somewhere into the next room. Since then 
I have had the legs sawed off of my desk, so that 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 51 

these literary beggars, who delight to eat up one's val- 
uable papers, should not climb in and make a meal off 
of my private cable code — a thing which they started 
to do some time ago. They have already several 
times run off with the candle which was used for 
heating sealing-wax, and possess such prowess that 
they even took it out of the candlestick. 

We had a new arrival at the club lately in the per- 
son of a young Englishman who came fresh from 
Britain. Someone had stuffed him with tales of in- 
dolent life in the Far East, for he came in to his first 
dinner at the club clad only in pajamas and green 
carpet-bag slippers. He also thought that the Span- 
ish language consisted in adding final a's to words in 
the English tongue and shouted all over the club next 
morning for sopa, sopa, with which to cleanse him- 
self. But the servant brought him a plate of soup, 
and he is now trying to remember that soap in Span- 
ish is translated by j abort, not sopa. Jamon, the 
word for ham, however, is close enough to give him 
trouble and he will no doubt ask for soap instead of 
ham at our next repast. 

March 16th. 
The pony races came off with great eclat on the first 
four days of this month, and were decidedly interest- 
ing. All Manila turned out, and such a collection of 



52 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

carriages I have never seen. All the Spanish ladies 
put an extra coat of paint on their complexions, and, 
dressed in their best bibs and tuckers, made some- 
what of a ghastly show in the searching light of early 
afternoon. The high, thatched-roofed grand stand 
presented a duly gay appearance as the bell rang for 
the first event, and the dried-up paddy-fields, far 
and near, crackled with natives directing their steps 
toward the centre of attraction. 

In front of the grand stand groups of Spaniards, 
Englishmen, and sea-captains formed centres for bet- 
ting, and off at the sides were refreshment-booths to 
which everyone made pilgrimage as often as the ar- 
ticulatory muscles were in need of lubrication. 

Some of the ponies were splendid-looking little 
" critters " and made almost as fast time as their larger 
brethren, the horses. During race-afternoons, busi- 
ness in the city was entirely suspended, and everyone 
who had a dollar took it to the race-course to gain 
other dollars. As the currency system is all metal, 
bets were paid in hard coin, and if you happened to 
buy a lucky ticket in that gambling machine, the 
" totalizator," you would perhaps have a whole hatful 
of heavy silver cartwheels shoved at you on present- 
ing the winning pasteboard. And it was no uncom- 
mon sight at the close of the races to see some of 
the thinly clad natives whom fortune had favored go 



YESTERDAYS IJST THE PHILIPPINES 53 

trudging home across the rice-fields, carrying a load 
of dollars in a straw hat or a bright bandana. 

One by one the vessels are dropping away from 
their anchorage in the bay, and by Saturday our 
Vigilant will heave up anchor and start on her twenty- 
thousand-mile journey to Boston via the Cape, with 
her big cargo of hemp. Thanks to our attentions to 
the captains, they have seemed willing to take home 
for us any amount of souvenirs and curios, and I have 
sent along quite an assortment of stuffed bats, lizards, 
and snake-skin canes, which I feel sure will cause 
somebody to creep on their arrival. 

Manila's best cigar, made of a special, selected 
tobacco, wrapped in the neatest of silverfoil and 
packed in rosewood boxes tied with Spanish ribbon, 
costs about five cents and is considered a rare deli- 
cacy. One scarcely ever sees these cigars, the " In- 
comparables," outside of the city itself, and the brand 
is so choice that but few smokers are acquainted with 
it. The foreigner in Manila thinks he is paying dear 
for his weed at $20 per thousand, and some of our 
professional smokers limit themselves to those favorite 
" Bouquets " which correspond to our " two-for-a-quar- 
ter" variety but sell here for $1.80 a hundred. Below 
these upper grades come a various assortment of 
cheaper varieties, including the cheroots, big at one 
end and small at the other, and the $3-a-thousand 



54 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

cigars which axe made of the first thing that comes 
handy, to be sold to the crews of deep-water mer- 
chantmen. A native of the Philippines wants his 
cigarette, and gets it. Packages of thirty are sold 
on almost every corner for a couple of coppers, and to 
my mind the Manila cigarette is far superior to the 
variety found in Cuba. Smoking is, of course, en- 
couraged by prices such as these, and one finds it 
perfectly good form to borrow a cigarette, as well as 
a light, from his neighbor in the tram-car or on the 
plaza. Even on the toll-bridge which spans the Pasig 
you pay your copper for crossing, and get in change 
a box of matches ; and if you are queer enough not 
to want the matches, the man will give you instead a 
ticket that avails for the return trip. 

Sunday I left my room at the club and moved into 
our new house out in the suburb of Santa Mesa. It 
is just a week now since the Chinese cook came and 
began to christen the pots and saucepans, whose 
Spanish names I shall never get to remember. He 
began by rendering me a small account of the 
" extras " provided for our table, and I was floored 
the first thing on an item of five cents put down as 
" Hongos." I asked him what that was. He spluttered 
around in Spanish and looked about the room to 
see if he couldn't find a few growing in one of our 
pictures of still life on the walls. At length, being 



YESTERDAYS IJNT THE PHILIPPINES 55 

struck with an inspiration, he seized a small fan, ex- 
citedly stuck it into one of our flower-pots, balanced 
on top of it an inverted ash-tray, and danced around, 
pointing first to the item on the bill and then to the 
peculiar growth in the flower-pot. I confess I didn't 
follow his reasoning, till suddenly it struck me that 
for our first dinner in the new house we had partaken 
of mushrooms. Not far off from an ash-tray balanced 
on a Japanese fan growing out of a flower-pot — are 
they ? The style of decoration in our house is espe- 
cially Japanese, and, needless to say, artistic, since 
there are large Japanese and Indian shops in Manila, 
where one can get all sorts of gimcracks at low prices. 
Our servants number seven, a small quota for two of 
us. Although their wages are small, amounting, as a 
rule, to $4 apiece per month, yet it is necessary to 
have plenty of them, in order that a certain few shall 
be awake when wanted. 

The fresh breeze, which in the evenings and early 
mornings blows down direct from the lofty mountains, 
is so cool that often several blankets have been neces- 
sary in the sleeping contrivance. Mosquitoes are still 
conspicuous by their absence, but the rats up in the 
roof sound tremendously numerous. All night they 
seem to be pulling boxes to and fro, taking up boards 
and nailing them down, and having a general all- 
hands-round sort of a dance. 



56 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

Nearly all of the older bungalows in Manila possess 
what are called house-snakes ; huge reptiles generally 
about twelve or fourteen feet long and as thick as a 
fire-engine hose, that permanently reside up in the 
roof and live on the rats. These big creatures are 
harmless, and rarely, if ever, leave their abodes. 
Judging from the noise over my cloth ceiling, a pair 
of these pets find pasturage up above, and I can hear 
them whacking around about once a week in their 
chase after rats. They are good though noisy rat- 
catchers, but since they must needs eat all they catch, 
their efficiency appears to be limited to their length 
of stomach, and one night of energetic campaign 
is generally followed by several days of rest, during 
which the snake sees if he has bitten off more than 
he can chew. If the Philippine cats were more noble 
specimens of the quadruped, I should try to place 
half a dozen up in this midnight concert-hall, but 
they are so feeble that I fear their lives would be in 
danger. It is hardly to be wondered at that these 
native cats are modestly retiring, when you wake at 
night to hear your shoes being dragged off across the 
floor by some huge rice-fed rodent, and I don't blame 
them at all for having right angles at the end of their 
tails. 

The only way to get rid of the rats seems to be to 
buy more snakes, and this is simple enough, for you 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 57 

often see the natives hawking them around in town, 
the boas curled up around bamboo poles, to which 
their heads are tied. 

Some of our other domestic pets are lizards, sup- 
posed to be about four feet long, who sing every even- 
ing at 8.30 p.m., from somewhere off down in the 
shrubbery ; several roving turkeys and pigs that be- 
long to the boys that serve us, a cluster of fighting- 
cocks, and a family of puppies. It is easy to be seen 
that our establishment is thus somewhat of a tropical 
menagerie, and a performance is almost always going 
on in some quarter or other. 

I have just completed the purchase of a horse and 
carriage complete, including the coachman, for $100, 
and on the first trial we passed everything on the 
road. The pony is a high-stepper, and rattled along 
over the ground at a terrific speed, as a good Philip- 
pine animal should. The coachman seems to know 
how to drive, which is a rare attainment among the 
natives, and so far, though he has run over two boys, 
he has not taken off any wheels in the car-tracks. 

They say it costs a good deal to live well out this 
way, but that is a mistake, and if one lived at home 
in the same style the bills would be at least ten times 
as large. To be sure, it would be possible to come 
to Manila, board with a Spanish family in the old 
city, avoid joining the club, and live almost for noth- 



58 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

ing. However, this is a custom not much encouraged 
in the Orient, and one cannot properly take his place 
among the colony of English and other Europeans 
without spending a certain reasonable amount. 

Business is done more on a social scale than at 
home, and the lowest English clerk in the large houses 
feels that he must enter into the free and easy expend- 
iture of his better-paid chief. After office hours are 
over everyone stands on the same social plane, and 
all business talk is tabooed. The office-boy often calls 
his lord and master " Bill," and frequently has a bet- 
ter-looking horse and carriage. 

The U. S. S. Concord has just come into the bay 
and been saluted by the fort. Some of her officers 
will probably come ashore to breakfast at the club, 
and it will probably devolve on the four Americans in 
the city to do what is needful in the way of courtesy 
to our fellow-countrymen. 

To day is the beginning of Easter Week, nearly all 
of whose days are holidays or holy days. This is one 
of the closest-observed seasons of the year, and on 
next Thursday and Friday, if you will believe it, no 
carriages are allowed to appear in the streets either 
of Manila or of the other cities. The tram-cars, to be 
sure, have of late years been allowed to run, and the 
doctor's carriage and the ice-carts can obtain permits. 
Beyond them, however, everybody has to stay at home 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 59 

or walk ; and in former times tram-cars were forbidden 
and no one was allowed to carry an open umbrella. 
It seems the proper thing to do to make arrangements 
with some of the English colony to take a trip off 
into the mountains, and my chum and I expect to 
start off by launch on Wednesday afternoon. Our 
party will consist of five, not including half a dozen 
servants, who are to make arrangements for bringing 
the provisions and bedding. 

On my return I hope to have some fodder for my 
pen and relate some of our experiences in the up- 
country districts. 



IV 






An Up-country Excursion — Steaming up the River to the Lake — Le- 
gend of the Chinaman and the Crocodile— Santa Cruz and Pagsan- 
jan — Dress of the Women — Mountain Gorges and River Rapids — 
Church Processions — Cocoanut Rafts — A " Carromata" Ride to 
Paquil— An Earthquake Lasting Forty-five Seconds — Small-pox 
and other Diseases in the Philippines— The Manila Fire Depart- 
ment—How Thatch Dealers Boom the Market— Cost of Living. 

March 27, 1894. 

The Easter holidays have come and gone, and one 
of the favorite vacation trips from Manila has been 
brought to a close. Five of us have seen lake, moun- 
tain, and river scenery ; have been taking interesting 
walks, drives, swims ; have camped out in a good 
house and enjoyed the hospitality of our native Ind- 
ian friends. Whistling for the punka-boy to go 
ahead, I will now set down the record of our trip. 

The week from the 18th of March to the 25th was 

practically one long holiday, but it was Wednesday, 

the 21st, in the afternoon, that we left Manila for the 

interior. Kand and I got up the trip by procuring 

a large and commodious steam-launch for five days 

— -gratis. Having done our share, we left our 

three companions to look after the " chow " and 

60 







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YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 61 

other kindred topics. To niy " boy " I merely said, 
" Wednesday we are going up to the laguna ; pre- 
pare what is necessary for four days." That was all, 
and on "Wednesday afternoon I found him at the 
launch with my clothes and bedding all ready to 
start. Here also were assembled hams, boxes of ice, 
and other provisions, big bundles of personal effects, 
and the four " boys " (a " boy " may be seventy years 
old if he likes) whom we w T ere going to take along. 

The whistle blew, the special artist with his came- 
ra ambled aboard, amidst a pile of sun-hats, oranges^ 
and excitement, and soon the Vigilante was stean: 
ing up the river on her sixty-mile trip. Familiar 
objects were first passed, but soon after leaving 
the up-town club new scenes presented themselves. 
The launch stirred up large waves astern that 
washed both banks of the river with great energy, 
and the first incident was the swamping of three 
banca-loads of grass that were on their way down to 
Manila under charge of Indian pedlers. Turn after 
turn opened up new scenes; our house on the hill 
began to fade away, and soon we skimmed through 
native villages where white blood was " not in it." 
The hills increased in size, the river lessened, and 
great bamboo-trees hung over toward the central 
channel. At one point, high up on the bluffs, perched 
a Chinese pagoda-like chapel, said to have been con- 



62 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

structed by a wealthy Celestial as a thanks-offering 
for his escape from a crocodile. He was bathing in 
the river, so the story goes, when suddenly he saw 
the monster making for him. He threw up his hands 
and vowed to build a monument to his patron 
saint if escape was vouchsafed him. And no sooner 
had he spoken than the crocodile turned to stone and 
lies there to-day, a long, low black mass, fretting the 
current that ripples over it. As we passed the rock 
it looked as if it had never been anything else, but 
the afternoon was too pleasant to doubt the veracity 
of the legend. On we went. The mountains ahead 
grew more to look like masses of rock and trees and 
less like soft blue velvet. Pasig, an important town, 
was left behind, the lowlands came again, a multitude 
of fish-weirs stuck up ahead, and before we knew it 
the great lake was holding us on its rather muddy 
waters just where it slobbered into the mouth of the 
river, its only outlet. 

On all sides save the one by which we had entered 
rose the mountains right out of the water, and I was 
reminded of Norway or Scotland. It was like a sea, 
and the farther shore was below the horizon. The 
sun had set and the full moon rose just ahead as we 
kept along the coast to the north. At half after 
eight o'clock we anchored off a little town called San- 
ta Cruz that seemed to be backed up by two very 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 63 

lofty mountain-peaks, and we were soon surrounded 
by two bancas filled with natives who began to trans- 
fer our many effects. And so we left the launch, were 
slowly poled ashore, and next found ourselves on a 
sandy beach surrounded by much people and bag- 
gage. Dispatching two of our retinue up into the 
town to fetch enough of the two-wheeled covered 
gigs called carromatas for our assembly, in about 
three-quarters of an hour we had the felicity of see- 
ing seven come racing down the road to the lake 
shore. Our destination, by the way, was a town 
called Pagsanjan, about three-quarters of an hour 
from Santa Cruz, and situated just at the foot of a 
range of mountains. The chattels were soon loaded, 
there was a cracking of whips, a creaking of harness, 
and the long procession started off at a rattling gait 
through the town and out into the rich cocoanut 
groves beyond. 

At Manila, outside of bamboo and banana trees, 
there is no sign of really equatorial vegetation, but 
up in the mountains there was no deception, and 
Nature did her best to let us know that the temperate 
zone was far away. We bounced along at a terrific 
pace and presently saw the lights of our little village. 
Rattling through an old stone archway, we drew up be- 
fore the house of a certain Captain Feliz, to whom we 
had been recommended. The genial old man, whose 



64 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

face and corporosity were charmingly circular in their 
rotundity, welcomed us with open-armed hospitality, 
and saying he knew of just the house that would 
accommodate our party, started to lead us to it. 
After a few steps he suddenly stopped, apologized 
smilingly, said he had forgotten his set of false teeth, 
and must return for them. And coming back shortly 
after, he took out his teeth, commented on their grace 
and usefulness, and said he could speak much better 
Spanish with than without them. 

In due season we drew up at a very thick- walled 
stone house on the high bank just above the river, 
and were invited to take possession. Our " boys " got 
out the provisions in short order, for a late supper ; 
our pieces of straw matting were spread out around 
the edges of the shining floor of the large "sala" 
which had been placed at our disposal for a dormi- 
tory ; pillows and light coverings were duly regulated, 
and after eating a bit, we said good-night to our 
new friends and turned in on the floor to rest. I 
found the hardwood planks so soft after my bed at 
Manila that before long I arose, arranged eight chairs 
in facing pairs, spread out my sleeping-arrangements, 
and soon fell asleep in a very good improvised bed 
which was high enough from the floor to keep cock- 
roaches from using me as a promenade. Thursday 
morning we arose early, washed ourselves on the 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 65 

balcony that overlooked the fashionable avenue of 
the village, and, as is the true Philippine custom, 
sprinkled the street with solutions of soapsuds. 

Now, as I have said before, the Thursday and Fri- 
day before Easter are tremendously sacred days in 
the Philippines, and no carriages of any description 
are permitted to move about. The little town was 
still as death, and the early-morning hush was only 
broken now and then by the weird caterwaulings of 
the peculiar Passion songs which the natives in these 
parts sing off and on during Lent. Later on, as we 
finished breakfast, groups of women began coming out 
of the various houses and directed their steps church- 
ward. Most of them were gorgeously dressed in all 
colors of the solar spectrum — with a little cloth 
added on — and it was instructive to see an expen- 
sively gowned Indian woman emerge from a shabby 
little nipa hut that didn't look as if it could incu- 
bate such starched freshness. For the dresses that 
some of these people wear are costly; and even 
their pina neckerchiefs often cost $100. 

After breakfast we went down to the river and got 
into five hollowed- out tree-trunks, preparatory to the 
start up into the mountain-gorges. It was worse 
than riding a bicycle, trying to balance one of the 
crazy affairs, and for a few moments I feared my 
camera and I would get wet. However, nobody 



66 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

turned turtle, and we were paddled up between the 
high cocoanut-f ringed banks of the wonderfully clear 
river before the early morning sun had looked over 
the mountains into whose cool heart we were going. 

Then came the first rapids, with backgrounds of 
rich slopes showing heavy growths of hemp and 
cocoa palms. Another short paddle and the second 
set of rapids was passed on foot. A clear blue lane 
of water then stretched out in front of us and reached 
squarely into the mountain fastnesses through a 
huge rift where almost perpendicular walls were 
artistically draped with rich foliage that concealed 
birds of many colors, a few chattering monkeys, and 
many hanging creepers. Again it seemed like a 
Norwegian fjord or the Via Mala, but here, instead 
of bare rocks, were deeply verdured ones. Above, 
the blue sky showed in a narrow irregular line ; 
below, the absolutely clear water reflected the heav- 
ens ; the cliffs rose a thousand feet, the water was 
five hundred feet deep, the birds sang, the creepers 
hung, the water dripped, and we seemed to float 
through a sort of El Dorado, a visionary and unreal 
paradise. At last we glided in through a specially 
narrow lane not more than fifty feet wide ; a holy 
twilight prevailed ; the cliffs seemed to hold up the 
few fleecy clouds that floated far over our head, and 
we landed on a little jutting point for bathing and re- 




Where the Crackers were Wet. The Rapids in the Gorges of Pagsanjan. 

See page 67. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 67 

freshments. It seemed as if we were diving into the 
river Lethe or being introduced to the boudoir of 
Nature herself. In an hour we pushed on, passed up 
by three more rapids, and halted at last at the foot of 
a bridal-veil waterfall that charmed the eye with its 
beauty, cooled the air with its mists, and set off the 
green foliage with its white purity. Here we lunched, 
and in lieu of warm beer drank in the beauties of the 
scenery. 

The return was a repetition of the advance, except 
that we shot one or two of the rapids, and that the 
hanca holding the boy and the provisions upset 
in a critical place, wetting the crackers that were 
labelled "keep dry." We got back to our house by 
early afternoon, and all agreed that an inimitable, 
unexcelled, wouldn't-have-missed-it-for-the-world ex- 
cursion had passed into history. 

Good old Captain Feliz took us to call on some of 
the native villagers in the late afternoon, who ex- 
hibited quite a bit of Indian hospitality. At one 
house was a pretty Indian girl who spoke Spanish 
very well and entertained our party of six with as 
much grace as an American belle. Of course the 
presence of five " Ingleses " in town was quite an 
event in a place fifty miles from Manila, and as we 
walked through street after street each house-win- 
dow presented at least seven curious faces; dogs 



68 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

barked, fighting-cocks crowed, and the occupations of 
the moment were suspended. 

After dinner we sat out on the balcony to watch 
the procession that wound around through the vari- 
ous streets, starting from the fortress-like church and 
finally bringing up there. These church parades are 
a good deal like our torch-light processions, except 
that here images, not mud-besprinkled men, carry 
most of the torches. In this affair there were a dozen 
or more floats, each one bearing a saint, an apostle, 
or somebody else, and each decorated with very 
costly drapery, ornaments, and elaborate candelabra 
illuminators. Scattered all along between the floats 
straggled natives carrying poles on which were im- 
ages of a candle, a hand, a spear, a pair of nails, a 
cock, a set of garments, and other symbolic articles 
relating to the crucifixion. Then came Peter on a 
very elaborate moving pedestal, and in his hand he 
held the traditional bunch of keys. Then a Descent 
from the Cross, with two apostles standing up on 
step-ladders. Next came the band of the procession 
— three men singing to the tune of an old violin — and 
finally the Virgin Mary with glass tears rolling down 
her wax cheeks. On each side of the line from start 
to finish trooped the populace, mostly women dressed 
in black and carrying candles. 

Next day was Good Friday. No traps of any de- 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 69 

scription to be had, as none were allowed to run, and 
so we spent the day about the town and in walk- 
ing up into the hills. A look into the great, solid 
old church in the morning showed us a fragrant and 
gaudily dressed audience kneeling in various post- 
ures on the tiled floors, while numerous dogs of 
various cross breeds and tempers meandered in 
through the door and among the worshippers. From 
the church we strolled across a very primitive 
bamboo bridge over a branch river, and wandered 
through a luxurious cocoanut grove beneath whose 
tall trees were situate a couple of very rudimentary 
cocoanut-oil mills and the houses of the operators. 
The machinery was very crude. One might think he 
was back in the days of stone knives, seeing these 
simple contrivances, the awkward levers, the foot- 
power grindstones, and the old pots and kettles. In 
the river near the mills were thousands of cocoanuts 
ready to be tied together in rafts for floating down to 
Manila, and everybody's business up this way seemed 
to consist in watching this oily fruit fall from the 
trees. 

In the early evening, just before another religious 
procession started, we heard a great clatter up in the 
belfry of the old church, and learned that the hubbub 
was made by " devil-frighteners." On inquiring as 
to the nature of this weird clap-trap symphony, it 



70 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

seems that on these especially holy days men are 
stationed up in the bell-towers with huge wooden 
rattles, which they so manipulate from time to time 
that the noise is said to act as a scare-crow to the 
various devils who are supposed to be hovering about 
seeking whom they may devour. 

After another peaceful night's rest, some of us 
took our morning jump into the river, and all prepared 
for a twelve-mile carromata drive out along the 
lake shore beneath the mountains, to a little village 
called Paquil, said to be possessed of a crystal spring 
bathing-pool. The road for a good bit of the way 
was of the Napoleon-crossing-the-Alps style, and it 
got to be so bad I rather thought we were in for a 
walk. Not a bit of it. The carromatas are built 
strong as the rocks themselves, the wheels are huge 
and solid, the ponies tough as prize-fighters, and the 
driver urges the whole affair along at a tremendous 
pace. So we bounced along, and most of our time 
was spent, not on the seat, but midway between it 
and the roof, which occasionally came down and 
thumped our heads. On the way we passed through 
numerous little villages, and in one out-of-the-way 
place we called on an American, Thomas Collins, who 
has been practically shut in out here for twenty-five 
years. It seems that he got cheated out of a hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars' worth of valuable wood a 






YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 71 

good while ago by the officials of a certain provincial 
district, and has been trying to get the claim paid 
ever since. He was a queer chap, and had almost 
forgotten how to speak American ; but at last he man- 
aged to remember the word "hell," and then his 
ideas began to flow more freely. 

When we arrived at Paquil our conductor, the 
genial Captain Feliz, walked up to the house of an 
acquaintance and asked him to put it at our disposal. 
As before, the request was father to the grant, and we 
dumped our chattels down into a parlor full of wax 
virgins and crucifixes. The bath, for which the vil- 
lage is quite famous, is a large pool five feet deep, 
with a pebble bottom. At one end a stream of clear 
water gushes forth from the hillside, while at the 
other an overflow brook carries off the surplus and 
goes bubbling down through the village to the lake. 
We had our swim after all the native bathers had left, 
and got back to our house in time for a tiffin that had 
been brought with us in the baskets. In the early 
afternoon we took our siesta, in the later hours 
started for our joggle ty return drive, and at Pagsanjan 
found prepared for us a feast of sucking pigs. 

On Sunday morning we were ready for our return 
to Manila. The seven gigs arrived, we said hearty 
farewell to our friends, presented Captain Feliz 
some empty bottles and two teapots, and rattled out 



72 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

through the town toward Santa Cruz, where our 
launch was in waiting. The trip was cool and pleas- 
ant across the lake, but it was hot when in about four 
and a half hours we got to the low river-country 
again. The sail down was like the sail up, and by 
dinner-time we backed water to bump into the portico 
of the club, where all hands disembarked for dinner. 
Thus ended what I suppose is the most popular and 
most delightful excursion which the foreigner can 
make from the capital of the Philippines in the few 
days which the church feasts at Easter put at his 
disposal. 

April 6th. 

The other night I dreamt I was climbing up a long 
hill on a bicycle. Once at the top, I started down 
over the other side at a terrific pace. Somehow or 
other, by mistake, the wheel ran off into a gutter 
at the side of the road, and bounced around in such 
a dangerous manner that it all but upset. How- 
ever, with tremendous exertion, I managed to. jump 
the mechanism back onto the smooth ground again, 
and continued safely down to the bottom of the hill 
at a two-forty gait. Arrived at the bottom, I conven- 
iently woke up, and heard a rat under the bed trying 
to slide one of my shoes off across the floor. 

Next morning, on coming down to the office, several 
of my business friends asked me if I had felt the severe 







^r> 



o 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 73 

earthquake shock during the night. I said " No," and 
inquired as to the particulars. It seems that the 
shock lasted some forty-five seconds, and my chum 
was awakened by his bed commencing to rock around 
and by the four walls of his room attempting to move 
in different directions. Nothing in the city was much 
injured, I believe, and next day the really excellent 
observatory, conducted by the Jesuits, gave out a full 
illustrated description of the affair. 

Up at our new bungalow, the only incidents worthy 
of note have been the attempted stealing of my pony 
and the consumption of my best shoes by one of our 
house-rats. 

A Philippine burglar, curiously enough, takes off 
his clothes, smears his dark skin with cocoanut-oil, 
and prowls around like a greased pig that cannot be 
caught. One of these slippery thieves got into our 
stable, unhitched my pony, and took him almost to 
the front gate before the sleepy coachman found his 
wits. But prompt action saved the day, and the lu- 
bricated robber escaped, leaving his booty pawing the 
ground. 

But with my shoes I was not so fortunate. I 
woke up suddenly to hear something being dragged 
across the floor. Thinking it was only a rat making 
off with a boot-jack with which to line his nest, I re- 
frained from tempting Providence by leaving the pro- 



74 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

tection of the mosquito-netting. Next morning I 
found that one of these rodents had pulled a pair 
of my patent-leather shoes off a low shelf beneath 
the bed, dragged them out into the hallway behind a 
hat-rack, and eaten up the most savory portions of 
the bindings. Complimentary to the prowess of 
the rat or to the lightness of my shoes — which ? I 
keep them now as articles on which the patent has 
run out — worthless, but curiosities. 

Otherwise things have run smoothly, and each 
evening we lie in the long chairs on the broad ve- 
randa, watching the Southern Cross come up over 
the hills, or the score of brush-fires of dried rice- 
stalks that illuminate the darkness away off toward 
the mountains. The music from our piano seems to 
give much delight to the members of the servants' 
hall, now nine in number, besides several puppies and 
game-cocks. The other night, although in the midst 
of the hot season, we had a prodigious cold snap 
again, when the thermometer went down to sixty, 
after being ninety-five during the day, and two blan- 
kets were not at all uncomfortable. 

I see by the papers that there are at least two cases 
of small-pox in Boston, that everybody is alarmed 
and hundreds are getting vaccinated. Curious state 
of affairs — isn't it ? — when every day out here you see 
small children running around in the streets, covered 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 75 

with evidences of this disease. Nobody thinks any- 
thing about small-pox in Manila, and one ceases to 
notice it if a Philippine mamma sits opposite you in 
the tram-car, holding in her lap a scantily clothed 
child whose swarthy hide is illuminated with those 
unmistakable markings. Some weeks ago there were 
even four hundred deaths a week in Manila from 
this disease alone ; and from the way in which the 
afflicted mix with the hale and hearty, you can only 
wonder that there were not four thousand. But 
small-pox flourishes best in the cool, dry days of our 
winter months, and is now being stamped out by the 
warmer weather. An effort is being made to have 
everybody vaccinated, and the steamers from Japan 
have brought down whole cargoes of lymph, but the 
natives do not see any reason why they should un- 
dergo this experiment, and would much prefer to have 
the small-pox than to be vaccinated. And this being 
the case, it is no wonder that almost seventy-five per 
cent, of them bear those uncomplimentary marks of 
the disease's attention. 

Now that I have inoculated my page with a refer- 
ence to this rather unpleasant subject, it is only a bit 
of sad truth to tell of the only fatality caused by the 
malady in our little Anglo-Saxon colony. Recently I 
went into the Bay with a young Englishman who had 
always lived in terror of this one disease, and had 



76 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

avoided both contact with the natives and excursions 
into the infected districts. The launch took me to the 
vessel which we were loading, and then carried him 
on to that receiving cargo from his concern. Later 
she returned with him, picked me up, and together we 
went ashore to stop a moment at the club before going 
home for the day. I never saw him again, poor chap, 
though I did take over his stable, for next morning he 
was taken with black small-pox and died in a week. 

The families of the lightermen in the Bay — crowded 
as they are into the hencoops over the stern of the 
bulky craft — are full of it, and hence the fatal ending 
to our little afternoon excursion. As a rule, how- 
ever, the members of the English-speaking colony get 
so used to this disease that they have no especial fear 
in suddenly turning a sharp corner of running into 
some native sufferer. 

In days gone by, when cholera decimated Manila's 
numbers, when people died faster than they could be 
buried, when business was at a standstill and the city 
one great death-house, were the times that tried 
men's souls. But now that those big water-mains 
which run along the ground bring fresh water from 
far up into the hills, the natives have given up 
the deadly practice of drinking from the river, and, 
thanks to the good supply system, no longer give the 
cholera free admittance. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 77 

Besides small-pox, then, fever is about tlie greatest 
enemy, and certain types of the malarial variety seem 
so common that the sufferers from them often walk 
into the club, drop into a chair, and say, " Got the 
fever again. Means another lay-off. " If they can 
keep about, the old stagers never give up ; but 
novices buy thermometers and cracked ice, and either 
go through a terrific siege, like my friend, whose 
eight weeks' struggle shrunk his head so that in con- 
valescence his hat touched his ears, or escape with a 
week's initiation. Typhoid seems also common, and 
there is generally one member of the colony, for 
whom the rest are anxious, stretched out in ice- 
baths and wishing he had never seen the Philip- 
pines. The old hands — who, by the way, seem to 
be regular sufferers from the fever — all say the 
only way to be safe is to drink plenty of whiskey, 
but so far I have found that the less one takes the 
better off he is. 

Someone in the States has suggested that if things 
get too hot it would be well to run over to Hong 
Kong for a change of scene. But if there is any place 
in the world that is hotter, stickier, more disagree- 
able than Hong Kong, in the months from May to 
October, let us hear from it. It is far worse in sum- 
mer than Manila, for, completely shut in as it is by 
the mountains, it does not receive the benefit of the 



78 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

southwest monsoon, which blows with great force 
over the Philippines during the above months. Even 
Japan itself gets a good roasting for the two or three 
months of the hot season, and there is not much left 
to do but to seek cold weather in Australia. Our only 
very hot months here are said to be April and May ; 
sometimes part of June. The sun now is directly 
overhead and going fast to the north of us, but so far 
the temperature has never been unbearable. The mer- 
cury stands at about ninety-five from twelve to three 
each day, but somehow 1 or other one does not feel it 
so much in the cool white suits, unless he attempts to 
fall asleep on some of the sheet-iron roofs. The 
nights are still cool and comfortable, and what with 
a cold snap now and then, such as I spoke of above, 
fans are having a poor sale. In the afternoon, walk- 
ing, rowing, and tennis are still possible, and the 
bands of the Luneta still have enough wind left to 
give us the " Funeral March " or " Prize Song." 

April 28th. 
Manila fare, like Manila life, is not unwholesome, 
but it lacks variety, and one rather tires, now and 
then, of soup, chicken, beefsteak, and toothpicks — 
four staples. But fortunately for us who like variety, 
though unhappily for five or six hundred other people, 
there occurred a vast conflagration yesterday after- 




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YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 79 

noon that sent about five or six hundred houses sail- 
ing off through the air in the form of* smoke. 

As we were getting ready to leave the office for 
the day, clouds of smoke suddenly began to rise over 
the iron house-roofs to the eastward, and we knew 
that one of Manila's semi-annual holocaustic celebra- 
tions was in progress. The church bells began to 
ring, and all sorts of people and carriages started 
toward the centre of interest. 

The Manila Fire Department consists of about six 
hand-engines and a few hose-carts, and if a fire gets 
started it generally burns along until an open field, a 
river, or a thick mass of banana-trees stops its prog- 
ress. The English houses, to be sure, have recently 
gotten out from home one of their small steam "gar- 
den-pumps," and many of the young Britons have had 
weekly practice in manipulating its various parts. 
When the alarm for the present fire rang you might 
have seen several servants, employed in their re- 
spective homes by the members of the new Volunteer 
Fire Department, slowly wandering toward the shed 
where the engine w T as kept, with some nicely folded 
red shirts, coats with brass buttons, helmets with 
Matterhorn-like summits, and axes that shone from 
lack of work. These youths did not seem to be in 
any hurry, and it turned out that when they reached 
the engine-house, when their masters had togged 



80 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

up sufficiently well to impress the spectators, and 
when the engine finally got to the fire, the build- 
ings had been translated into their new and rather 
more ethereal form. 

The fire was two miles, more or less, from the cen- 
tre of the town. The Volunteer Fire Brigade had 
to haul the engine the entire distance, as they feared 
that if the usual carabao oxen were hitched on, the 
speed over the pavements would be too great. After 
reaching the centre of action, an hour was spent in 
waiting for the man who brought some spare coal in 
a wheelbarrow and in choosing a location which 
would not be uncomfortable for the brigade. Conse- 
quently, the " London Garden Pump " was stationed 
to windward of the fire, on a side where it could not 
possibly spread any farther, and thus all stray flames 
and smoke were avoided. A hose was stuck down 
into the creek, and steam turned on. A stream of 
water about large enough to be clearly visible with a 
microscope suddenly jumped forth into the middle 
of the street, wetting the spectators. Somebody had 
forgotten to attach the extra pieces of hose that were 
to lead down to the fire, and steam had to be turned 
off. After everything was ready to get to business, a 
tram-car came along, and it wasn't allowable to stop 
its progress by putting a hose across the track, even 
if there was a fire. And so it went from grave to 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 81 

gay, the swell brigade furnishing the humorous part 
of the otherwise rather sad spectacle. 

A Philippine fire is like any other, except that with 
the many nipa houses it does its work quickly and 
well, and in this instance the whole affair lasted but 
a couple of hours. Hundreds of families moved out 
into the wet rice-fields, with all their chattels, and 
there were many curious-looking groups. In saving 
various articles of furniture and other valuables, the 
fighting-cock, as usual, was considered the most im- 
portant, and it was interesting to watch the natives 
trudging along with scared faces, holding a rooster 
by the legs in one hand and a baby or two in the 
other. Pigs, chickens, and dogs seemed to come next 
in value, and after them ice-chests and images of the 
Virgin Mary. The sun went down on a strange 
spectacle, and it was hard not to pity all the crowd 
that were thus rudely thrown out of their habitations. 
Myriads of spectators there were and myriads of 
carriages, of all ages and sizes, some loaded with 
chattels ready to take flight, and others waiting to 
be. At dusk, however, all danger was over ; the 
mobs departed north, east, south, and west ; the brig- 
ade carefully brushed the dust off their boots and 
shirts, and the poor burned-out unfortunates looked 
with moistened eyes on the ruin of their homes. 

The wags go far enough to say that the dealers in 



82 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

thatch are responsible for many of the big fires both 
in the capital and smaller villages and that, when 
times are bad or prices for thatch low, they arrange 
to " bull " the market by means of a conflagration. 
A lamp is tipped over — a thousand houses go up in 
smoke, and as go the houses so rise the prices for 
nipa thatch. 

The second series of pony races occurred during 
the middle days of this month, at the race-track down 
below our bungalow, and all Manila again came roll- 
ing up through the dust to see the performances of 
the smart ponies. The events were but a repetition 
of those which took place in March, except that in 
many respects the running-time was better and the 
races far more close and interesting. 

Some of the old stagers are beginning to complain 
of the heat. We take afternoon tea now and then, as 
is customary in all the business houses, with some of 
our friends, in an office on the other side of our build- 
ing. Yesterday afternoon a thermometer placed out- 
side of our window registered 125° R, I suspect 
this was owing to some of the reflected heat coming 
from the iron roofs. Inside the room the mercury 
stood at 97° F., but we drank our hot tea and 
enjoyed the coolness which resulted from consequent 
perspiration. 

I have now been settled in Manila long enough to 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 83 

find out what it costs to live, and the general cheap- 
ness of existence is more appalling than I first 
thought. Our house is a good one, with all the com- 
forts of home, and is surrounded by an acre or two of 
land. We have stables for our horses and outbuild- 
ings for the families of our servants. At the end 
of the month all expenditures for house-rent, food, 
wages, light, and sundries are posted together and 
divided by three, and with everything included my 
monthly share comes to twenty-nine gold dollars — 
less than one of our American cart-wheels — per diem. 

Where in the States could you rent a suburban 
house and lot, keep half a dozen servants, pay ycmr 
meat bill, your drink bill, and your rent all for less 
than a single dollar a day ! You can scarcely drive 
a dozen blocks in a hansom or buy a pound of Mail- 
lard's for that money at home and yet, in Manila, that 
one coin shelters you from the weather, ministers to 
the inner man, and keeps the parlor in order. 

Our cook, for instance, gets forty cents each morn- 
ing to supply our table with dinner enough for four 
people, and for five cents extra he will decorate the 
cloth with orchids and put peas in the soup. To 
think of being able to get up a six-course dinner, in- 
cluding usually a whole chicken, besides a roast, with 
vegetables, salad, dessert, fruit, and coffee, for such a 
sum seems ridiculous in the extreme. 



84 YESTEKDAYS IJST THE PHILIPPINES 

The methods of marketing are almost as noteworthy 
as the low prices for " raw materials." All meat must 
be eaten on the same day it is killed, since here in the 
tropics even ice fails to preserve fish, flesh, or fowl. 
As a result, while the beef and mutton are killed in 
the early morning— a few hours before the market 
opens — the smaller fry, such as chickens and game, 
are sold alive. From six to ten on any morning the 
native and Chinese cooks from many families may be 
seen bargaining for the day's supply among the nest 
of stalls in the big market. After filling their baskets 
numbers of them mount the little tram-car for the re- 
turn trips to their kitchens and proceed to pluck the 
feathers off the live chickens or birds as they jog 
along on the front or rear platform. By the time 
they have arrived home the poor creatures are stripped 
of foliage, and, keenly suffering, are pegged down to 
the floor of the kitchen to await their fate. Then, 
when the creaking of the front gate announces the 
return of the master, it is time enough to wring the 
necks of the unfortunates and shove them into the 
boiling-pot or roasting-pan that seems but to accen- 
tuate a certain toughness which fresh-killed meat 
possesses. 

The washing-bill, again, is far from commensurate 
with the fulness of one's clothes-hamper, and for two 
gold dollars per month I can turn over to my laundry- 




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YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 85 

man — who comes in from the country once a week — 
as much or as little as I please. Two full suits of 
white sheeting clothes a day for thirty days make 
one item of no mean dimensions, and yet the lavan- 
dero turns up each week with his basketful, per- 
fectly satisfied with his remuneration. Then, too, he 
washes well, and although, when I see him standing 
knee-deep in the river whanging my trousers from 
over his head down onto a flat stone, I fear for seams 
and buttons, nothing appears to suffer. And al- 
though he builds a small bonfire in a brass flat-iron 
that looks like a warming-pan and runs it over my 
white coats all blazing as it is, the result is excellent, 
and one's linen seems better laundered than in the 
mills that grind away at home. 

As servants, these boys of ours could teach much to 
some of their more civilized brethren from Ireland or 
Nova Scotia now holding sway in American fami- 
lies. They take bossing well, and actually expect to 
have their heads punched if things go wrong. They 
don't put their arms akimbo and march out of the 
house if we mildly suggest that the quality of ants in 
the cake or the water-pitcher is not up to standard, 
and actually make one feel at liberty to require any- 
thing of them. 

And speaking of ants, these little creatures are 
everywhere ready to eat your house or your dinner 



86 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

right from under yon. The legs of the dining-table, 
the ice-chest, and the sideboard must be islanded in 
cups of kerosene, and even the feet to one's bed must 
undergo the same treatment, in order that the occu- 
pant may awake in the morning to find something of 
himself left. Cockroaches are almost equally fierce 
and, endowed with wings, these creatures, sometimes 
four inches long, go sailing out the window as you 
close your eyes and try to step on them. They prowl 
around at night, with a sort of clicking sound, seek- 
ing something to devour, and are apparently just as 
satisfied to eat the glue out of a book-cover as they 
are to feed on the rims to one's cuffs or shirt-collars, 
moist with perspiration. 

What the ants don't swarm over the cockroaches 
examine, and what they reject seems to be taken in 
charge by the heavy green mould that beards one's 
shoes, valise, and tweed suits at the slightest sugges- 
tion of wet weather. 



Visit of the Sagamore— Another Mountain Excursion— The Caves of 
Montalvan— A Hundred-mile View— A Village School— A " Fi- 
esta " at Obando— The Manila Fire-tree— A Move to the Seashore 
— A Waterspout — Captain Tayler's Dilemma— A Trip Southward 
—The Lake of Taal and its Volcano— Seven Hours of Poling— A 
Night's Sleep in a Hen-coop. 

May 9, 1894. 
The other day the yacht Sagamore dropped anchor 
in the bay, her owner and his guests, all Harvard 
men, having got thus far on their tour around the 
world. I was sitting on the Luneta, Sunday evening, 
when I saw those familiar Harvard hat-ribbons com- 
ing, and in behalf of our little American colony wel- 
comed the wearers of them to Manila. In return for 
a dinner or two at the club and a visit to the huge 
cigar-factories, where three or four thousand opera- 
tors pound away all day at the fragrant weed, I spent 
a noon and afternoon aboard the yacht, glad to enjoy 
a change of fare. The Sagamore is a worthy boat 
and seems to be loaded up with gimcracks and curios 
of all classes and descriptions. A collector would 
positively be squint-eyed with pleasure to see the 

old vases, carved wood-work, plaques, knives, sabres, 

87 



88 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

pots and kettles that her passengers have picked up 
all along the way ; and it is indeed the only method 
by which to scour curios from the Orient. The boys 
thought the Luneta was the best place in its way they 
had yet seen, and it was as much as I could do to get 
them away from listening to the artillery-band and 
looking at the crowds of people in carriages. Three 
men in a boat of the Sagamore's size make a pretty 
small passenger-list for a pretty long voyage. 

We've kept up our record as tripsters by having 
gone again up into the mountains, seen pounds of 
scenery, breathed fine air, and received great hospi- 
tality from the natives. Monday was a bank-holiday, 
so late on Saturday afternoon four of us started in 
two-horse carromatas for a mountain village called 
Montalvan, about twenty miles from Manila. Two 
boys had been sent along a day ahead, with provisions 
and bedding, to find a native hut and provide for our 
arrival. We had a delightful drive out of Manila, 
passed through numerous native villages, forded three 
rivers, saw a fine sunset, and at about eight o'clock, 
after a three hours' journey, pulled up at a little na- 
tive house situated in a village at the foot of a lofty 
mountain-range. The occupants seemed willing and 
glad to turn out of their little shanty and put it at 
our disposal, and we were very comfortable. The 
house was not large, but it had a very neat little par- 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 89 

lor— curious name for a room out here — and in the 
corner, covered with a light bed-quilt, stood a wax 
figure of the Virgin Mary, with the usual glass tears 
running down her cheeks. The family of about four- 
teen slept somewhere out in the rear regions of the 
building, leaving us to spread out around the floor of 
the little sola, like unmounted club sandwiches. 

One of the party, more sensitive than the rest, woke 
about one in the morning and disturbed us by find- 
ing some four-inch spiders stringing cobwebs from 
the end of his nose to his ear and down to one finger. 
He was for the moment embarrassed enough to shout 
for joy and throw his slippers somewhere. But ex- 
cept for this, and a few rats that now and then tickled 
our toes, we slept well, and next morning before 
breakfast we went down to the shallow river for a 
swim. After a jolly good bath, a hearty breakfast, 
and a few preparations, our party of four, with 
the two boys and two guides, started up a steep 
valley that wound in among lofty mountains to the 
so-called Caves of Montalvan. 

One of our guides was the principal of a village 
school, who held sway over a group of little Indian 
girls under a big mango-tree, and he shut up shop to 
join our expedition. 

In about two hours and a half our caravan reached 
the narrower defile that pierced two mountains which 



90 YESTEKDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

came down hobnobbing together like a great gate, 
grand and picturesque. From a large, quiet pool just 
beneath the gates, we climbed almost straight up the 
mouth of the stalactite caves that run no one knows 
how far into the mountains, starting at a point about 
two hundred feet above the river. The guides made 
flare-torches of bamboos, and we entered the damp 
darkness, bounded by white limestone walls from 
which hung beautiful stalactites that glistened as the 
light struck them. In we went for a long way, now 
crawling on hands and knees and now stumbling into 
large vaulted chambers. Blind bats flew about and 
water trickled. It was ghostly, uncanny, but inter- 
esting. It seemed as if we were going into the very 
heart of the mountain, or were reading " King Solo- 
mon's Mines," and this impression was further carried 
out when we came to a small subterranean river that 
coursed down through a dark outlet and disappeared 
with weird gurglings. Unpleasant but perhaps imag- 
inary rumblings suggested that a sudden earth- 
quake might easily block our exit, and, retracing our 
steps, we breathed more freely on coming to the first 
glimmer of light. Once more in the air, we descended, 
took a good swim in the pool, lunched, and lay around 
for an hour. After another bath later on, we donned 
our sun-hats and trudged homeward over the long, 
rough path. A good walk, a good supper, a little 



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YESTERDAYS IIST THE PHILIPPINES 91 

dancing and music by the natives who occupied our 
house, and we went to sleep upon the floor. 

Next morning, after another early bath in the river, 
our party started to climb the mountain back of the 
town for a little experience in the bush. The work 
was hard and warm, but at the top came the reward 
of a superb view for a hundred miles around. Manila 
and the great plain, the bay and mountains beyond, 
were glorious before us, and behind the great moun- 
tain wilds that reached to the Pacific stretched off and 
up in great overlapping slabs of heavy greenness. 

The plain was cut up into the regulation checker- 
board farms of the richest looking description, and 
the scene was very much like an English one. Far 
away at the edge of the Bay could be seen the glisten- 
ing white houses and steeples of Manila. Away to 
the northwest and southwest were the great fertile 
stretches of country that produce tons and tons of 
rice and sugar, reaching to the sky or distant moun- 
tains. We had luncheon in a leafy grotto ; the guides 
found water, and brought it in lengths of bamboo 
which they cut down ; deer ran past now and then 
down below us, and a short siesta on a bed of leaves 
finished off our morning's work. The return was so 
steep that it seemed as if Ave should go heels over 
head. However, we hung on to the long grass, and 
painted our once white suits with dust in the effort to 



92 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

reach level ground again. After a long descent, we 
came to the big mango-tree where the rural school 
was in session, and the little Filipinos were immediate- 
ly given a recess. They rushed about, got benches 
and water for us, and the old schoolmaster, who had 
left his wife to do the teaching while he went with us, 
set two or three of the shavers at work mopping off 
his ebony skin. Our visit at the school was in the 
order of an ovation. The children opened their al- 
mond eyes almost to the extent of turning them into 
circles, and when the camera was pointed at them for 
the first time in their young lives, their mouths so far 
followed suit that recitations had to be suspended. 

After thoroughly disorganizing discipline in the es- 
tablishment, we accompanied the half naked president 
of the seminary — who had been our guide — to the 
river, and there washed off such of the day's impres- 
sions as went easily into solution. 

And finally, after returning to our hut for tea, we 
packed up our baskets, whistled for the carromatas 
and jolted back to Manila through a flood of dust 
and sunset. 

Although the hot season is trying to do its best to 
scorch us, it has but dismally succeeded, and we have 
had scarcely any severe weather at all. The thunder- 
showers, harbingers of the southwest monsoon and 
the wet season, began two weeks ago, and it rains 



YESTEEDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 93 

now nearly every afternoon. The nights are all de- 
lightfully cool, and a coverlet is always comfortable. 
The sun is going well to the north to make hot 
June and July days for people in the States, and our 
season of light is growing shorter. When he gets 
back overhead again, heavy clouds will protect us 
from his attentions. 

Owing to the outbreak of black plague or something 
else among the Chinese in Hong Kong, the quarantine 
regulations here in Manila will cause the steamer by 
which I was going to send the mail to miss connec- 
tions. It was at first reported there were three thou- 
sand deaths in Hong Kong in six days, but I believe 
they have now taken off one or two ciphers from that 
amount. At all events Manila seems to be below the 
zone of this peculiar epidemic and is much better 
off at this time of the year than Hong Kong, which 
swelters away in that great unventilated scoop in 
the mountains. 

The men of the big artillery-band that plays at 
the Luneta twice a week have all been vaccinated 
lately, and are too broken up to blow their trumpets. 
The people are objecting, because the infantry band 
doesn't make nearly as good music, and only plays 
twice a week at most. The third regimental band is 
still fighting the savage Moros with trombones down 
at the south, although it is rumored they will soon 



94 YESTEKDAYS IN* THE PHILIPPINES 

return, and so at present about all the music and 
fireworks we have are derived from the thunder- 
storms that play around the sheet-iron roofs as if 
they meant business. But in spite of the terrific 
cannonade of sound and the blinding flashes of light- 
ning nothing seems to get hit, and the iron roofs may 
act as dispersers of the electric fluid even though at- 
tracting it. 

June 6th. 

Several days ago, a number of us went up the rail- 
road line to see a " fiesta " at a little village called 
Obando. It was a religious observance lasting three 
days, and pilgrims from many villages thought it 
their duty to go there on foot. A great dingy old 
church with buttressed walls yards thick, a large 
plaza shaded by big trees, and beyond, on all sides, 
the native houses. Such a crowd I have rarely seen. 
Everybody seemed to think it his duty to dance; 
and men, women, old men and children, mothers 
with babies and papas with kids, shouted, jumped 
around, danced, joggled each other, and rumpussed 
about until they were blue in the face, dripping with 
heat, and covered with dust. Then they would stop 
and another crowd take up the play. As the circus 
proceeded the crowds increased ; the old church was 
packed with worshippers who brought candles, and, 
receiving a blessing, spent an hour or so on the 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES ^5 

stone pavements in positions of contrite humility. 
Around the walls of the church were placed realistic 
paintings of the chromo order, representing hell and 
the river Styx, and as the natives looked at portraits 
of devils driving nails into the heads of the torment- 
ed, of sulphurous flames that licked the cheeks of 
the wicked in this world, or serpents that twined 
themselves into square knots around the chests of a 
dozen unfortunates, and of countless horned demons 
who plucked out the heartstrings of the condemned, 
they counted their beads with renewed vigor and 
mumbled long prayers. 

Countless little booths stood like mushrooms 
round about outside, and cheap jewellery, made in 
Germany, found ready sale. The dancing and shout- 
ing increased as the sun sank in the west, until the 
ground fairly shook and the dust arose in vast clouds. 
Around the edge of the church, under the porticoes, 
slept sections of the multitude who were preparing 
themselves to take part in the proceedings when 
others were tired out. It was a motley crowd, a 
motley scene, and an unforgettable collection of per- 
fumes. 

We left after a few hours' stay, and got back to 
Manila to find water a foot deep in some of the 
streets, as a result of one of the tropical thunder- 
storms which have now T begun in real earnest. And 



96 YESTERDAYS m THE PHILIPPINES 

speaking of rain, everything is looking fresh and 
green, now that the dusty days of the hot season are 
a thing of the past. All the bamboo-trees have 
leafed out anew, flowering shrubs have taken life, 
and all nature seems to have had a bath. 

One of the most showy trees in Manila is the arhol 
defuego (fire-tree) and this product of nature resem- 
bles a large oak in general and a full-blown Japanese 
cherry blossom in particular. Many of the streets in 
the city are bordered with groups of these fire-trees, 
of large and stately dimensions, and at present they 
are simply one mass of huge flaming red blossoms 
growing thickly together and showing a wonderful 
fire-like carnation color. Scarcely any leaves make 
their appearance on these trees during the season of 
blossom, and although now and then bits of green 
look out from the mass of red, yet the general effect 
is a vast blaze of burning color. 

We have left our country house on the hills of Santa 
Mesa, and have moved down to a little villa on the 
seacoast. The third man of our party, like many of 
his brother Englishmen who are burdened with small 
salaries but large debit balances, has at last decided 
to save money and room at his office. The house had 
too many regular boarders in the form of rats and 
snakes, was too large and too far off for the two of 
us left, and we decided to make a move to the sea- 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 97 

shore district. Our army of servants successfully 
solved the transportation problems involved, and 
we are now settled in new quarters. Although we 
miss the view of the mountains, and even the paddy- 
fields, we now get the salt air first hand, look out over 
the waters of the Bay, and are lulled to sleep by the 
rhythmic beating of the waves on the beach. Our 
view seaward leads the eye across a beautiful garden 
belonging to one of the rich house-owners living 
directly on the shore front, and the green of the 
trees, with the scent of somebody else's flowers, 
temper both the excess of glare and the brackish 
qualities of the sea-breeze. 

In Malate, where we now are, things are much 
civilized. We find we miss the snakes in the roof, 
but we have running water in the house and a 
shower-bath in the bath-room ; two rooms on the first 
floor; a parlor, two bed-rooms, dining-room, large 
hallway, kitchen, bath and "boys'" rooms on the 
second floor ; a small garden at the front and a stable 
at the back, and all included in a rent of $15 a 
month. The stable accommodates two ponies, and 
it is a jolly drive down-town in the morning or home 
in the evening. The road leads all the way along by 
the sea, Luneta, and Malecon Promenade, that runs 
under the yawning mouths of the old muzzle-loaders 
in front of the grim walls of the old city, between 



98 YESTEKDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

them and the beach. The salt-water bath in the 
early morning is often very pleasant, though the tem- 
perature of the liquid is somewhat too high to be 
exhilarating. Now and then some of the Britons 
living in the neighborhood will issue a summons 
for a sunrise swimming-party, and one of them will 
perhaps punctuate the ceremonies by supplying a 
typical breakfast of fresh fish and boiled rice, on 
the veranda of a house that perhaps overlooks the 
Bay. These seaside houses are particularly cool 
and fresh now that the winds of the southwest mon- 
soon come blowing into the front windows directly 
off the water, but later on, when typhoons become 
epidemic, it looks as if we should have the wind in 
more than wholesale doses. 

June 12th. 

Although the San Francisco steamer does not sail 
for Hong Kong until the 21st, it is necessary, on ac- 
count of this quarantine business, to post our letters 
in the Manila office to-day. 

Two of our latest vessels have come in together and 
begun to take in their cargoes of hemp for Boston. 
The captains are ruddy-faced veterans who seem to 
have taken part in the Civil War. One of them, who 
wears false teeth when he is ashore, and hails from 
New Hampshire, is particularly fond of cooling off 
under our big punka. The other may be of French 




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YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 99 

descent, though he comes from Ireland, and looks 
something like one of our distinguished Boston 
statesmen. They both climb up the stairs to our 
counting-room daily, call our big clock a " time de- 
stroyer " and so vie with each other in their efforts 
to handle the truth carelessly that it is often a ques- 
tion who comes off victor in these verbal contests. 
However, the skipper with the false ivories generally 
fails to get the last word, for he often loses his suc- 
tion power by fast talking, and has to leave off to 
prevent his teeth from slipping down his oesoph- 
agus. Once again the air in the office assumes a 
nautical aroma, and we shall be well employed and 
well talked to death. A whole parcel of American 
ships are now about due, and the Bay will liven up 
again with the Stars and Stripes as it did some two 
months ago. 

It rains every afternoon now, at about a quarter past 
three, and just after tiffin is over we begin to look 
for the thunder-clouds that predict the coming shower. 
The other day a huge waterspout formed out in the 
Bay, swirled along, gyrated about, scooted squarely 
through the shipping, and broke on the beach between 
our house and the Luneta. The cloud effects were 
extremely curious, and the whole display was a num- 
ber not generally down on the day's programme. 

The company who are putting in the new electric 



lL.fl C. 



100 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

lights seem to be doing good work, and it is expected 
that everything will be running by the end of the 
year. So far, Manila has been favored only with the 
dull light given by petroleum, previously brought out 
from New York, or over from China, and, curiously 
enough, the empty tins in which the oil has come 
seem to be almost as valuable as their contents. They 
are used here for about everything under the sun, the 
natives cover their roofs with tin from these sources, 
and some of those more musically inclined even make 
a petroleum can up into a trombone or cornet. 

Our house by the sea continues to prove very pleas- 
ant, and, peculiarly enough, the surf seems to beat on 
the beach with the same sound that it has on the New 
England coast. The southwest breeze blows strong 
from the Bay each afternoon, and the cumulus clouds 
are becoming heavier and more numerous day by day. 
The artillery-band still favors us with music at the 
Luneta, but before long it looks as if the rains would 
interrupt the afternoon promenade. 

The black plague at Hong Kong does not seem 
to diminish, as was expected, and it is said that many 
people are leaving the city. All steamers coming 
from that port to this suffer a fortnight's quarantine 
down the Bay, and, if the difficulty continues much 
longer, Manila markets will be destitute of two of 
their chief staples — mutton and potatoes — both of 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 101 

which have to come across from China, or down from 
Japan. And speaking of sheep, Captain Tayler, of 
the Esmeralda, has had another of his usual inter- 
esting experiences with the custom-house. Just as 
his vessel, fresh from quarantine and Hong Kong, 
had been visited by the doctor, on her way to her 
berth some distance up the river, one of the sheep 
died. Rule number something-or-other in the Code 
of the Sanidad says that anything or anybody dying 
during the day must be buried before sundown, 
under penalty, for neglect, of $50. Rule number 
something-else in the Customs Code, however, says 
that the captain of any vessel turning out cargo 
short or in excess of the amount called for by the 
manifest shall be fined $100 for each piece too 
many or too little. If my good friend, the Captain, 
buried the sheep, he would be fined $100 at the cus- 
tom-house for short out-turn. If he didn't bury it, 
the Board of Health would come down on him for 
$50, for neglecting regulations. The Captain, being 
a wise man, decided that it was more politic to be in 
the right with the doctor than with the officials at 
the custom-house, and at some considerable ex- 
pense sent the sheep on shore and had it buried 
with due honors. He could not have thrown it into 
the river, for this would have been to incur an addi- 
tional fine. Next morning, he presented the ship's 



102 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

manifest and a sheep's tail at the custom-house and 
the discharge of the live stock was begun. But, 
tail or no tail, the officials found the ship one sheep 
short and the Esmeralda was fined $100. Not quite 
so barefaced as the swindling of the poor skipper 
who came over from China with a load of paving- 
stones for Manila's Street Department. His vessel 
turned out seven paving-stones too many, and the 
fine was $700. 

In the language of Daniel Webster, I " refrain from 
saying " that a few dollars or a good dinner, bestowed 
upon the right person, in Manila, often go a long way 
toward throwing some official off the scent in his 
hungry search for irregularity, but am willing to admit 
that, in dealing with customs men who frequently 
" examine " cases of champagne by drinking up the 
contents of a bottle from each one in order to see 
that the liquid is not chloroform or cologne, one must 
keep his purse full, his talk cool, and his temper on 
ice. 

June 25, 1894. 

Last Monday was the monthly bank-holiday again, 
and three of us had previously decided to take a jour- 
ney southward for the purpose of seeing one of 
Luzon's active volcanoes and getting a little change 
of air and "chow." 

So, late on Saturday afternoon, we went aboard a 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 103 

dirty little steamer, which was to take us ninety miles 
down the coast. She wasn't as big as a good-sized 
tug and was laden with multicolored natives, who 
were on their way back to the provinces after a brief 
shopping expedition to the capital. We were soon 
sailing out past the fleet of larger vessels in the 
Bay, with our dull prow pointed to the mouth of 
the great inclosed body of water. At nightfall we 
reached the Corregidor light-house, at the Bay's en- 
trance, and thence our course lay to the south. At 
half-past two that night our craft reached a place 
called Taal. During our trip down we had become 
acquainted with a very pleasant Indian sugar-plant- 
er, who is as well off in dollars as rich in hospitality. 
At Taal he took us to one of the three big houses 
he owns, and, although only three o'clock in the 
morning, gave us a delicious breakfast. "We talked 
and chatted away comfortably, and as the first streaks 
of dawn appeared I played several appropriate se- 
lections on one of the two very good-toned pianos 
belonging to his establishment. This brought out his 
family, and before we set out for the river from which 
our start to the volcano was to be made, quite a social 
gathering was in progress. 

The natives all through the islands seemed indeed 
most courteous and hospitable to foreigners, and 
although a Spaniard hesitates to show his face out- 



104 YESTEKDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

side of any of the garrison towns, yet any of the other 
European bipeds is known in a minute and well treated. 
Our good friend at Taal went so far as to harness up 
a pair of ponies and drive us down to the river at four 
o'clock in the morning, and we found a large banca, 
previously ordered, waiting to take us up to the Lake 
of Taal and across to the volcano. 

Our banca was of good size, was rowed by 
seven men and steered by one, and had a little 
thatched hen-coop arrangement over the stern, to keep 
the sun off our heads. "We had brought one " boy " 
with us from Manila, with enough " chow " to last for 
two days, and soon all was stowed away in our floating 
tree-trunk. The river was shallow, and for most of 
the six miles of its length poles were the motive- 
power. It was slow work, and both wind and current 
were hostile. In due course, however, the lake came 
into view, and in its centre rose the volcano, smoking 
away like a true Filipino. The wind was now 
blowing strong and unfavorable, and we saw that it 
was not going to be an easy row across the six or 
seven miles of open water to the centre island. But 
the men worked with a will, and although the choppy 
waves slopped over into our roost once or twice so 
jocosely that it almost seemed as if we should have to 
turn back, we kept on. Benefitting by a lull or two, 
our progress was gradual, and at half after twelve, 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 105 

seven hours from Taal, we landed on the volcanic 
island and prepared for an ascent. 

The lake of Taal is from fifteen to twenty miles 
across, is surrounded by high hills and mountains, 
for the most part, and has for its centre the volcanic 
island upon whose edges rise the sloping sides of an 
active cone a thousand feet high. The lake is cer- 
tainly good to look at, reminding one forcibly of 
Loch Lomond, and the waters, shores, and moun- 
tains around all seem to bend their admiring gaze on 
the little volcano in its centre. 

Filling our water-jug, we set off up the barren lava- 
slopes of this nature's safety-valve, sweltering under 
the stiff climb in the hot sun. Happily, the view bet- 
tered each moment, the smell of the sulphur became 
stronger, and we forgot present discomfort in anticipa- 
tions of the revelation to come. After banging our 
shins on the particularly rough lava-beds of the as- 
cent, near the top, we saw a great steaming crater 
yawning below us and sending up clouds of sulphur- 
ous steam. In the centre of this vast, dreary Circus 
Maximus rose a fiat cone of red-hot squashy material, 
and out of it ascended the steam and smoke. All 
colors of the rainbow played with each other in the 
sun, and farther to the right was a boiling lake of 
fiery material that was variegated enough to suit an 
Italian organ-grinder. 



106 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

It was all very weird, and if we had not been so 
lazy we should probably have descended farther into 
this laboratory of fire than we did. But it was too 
hot to make matches of ourselves and the air smelt 
like the river Styx at low tide. So we were con- 
tented with a good view of the wonders of the vol- 
cano from a distance, enjoyed the panorama from 
the narrow encircling apex-ridge, and cooled off in 
the smart breeze. Once more at the lake, and it 
was not long before we were in it, tickling our feet 
on the rough cinders of the bottom. The bath was 
most rejuvenating after a hot midday climb, and 
just to sit in the warmish water up to one's neck 
gave one a sort of mellow feeling like that presum- 
ably possessed by a ripe apple ready to fall on the 
grass. 

The wind was now fresher than ever and more un- 
favorable to our course. The captain of the tree- 
trunk, in a tone quite as authoritative as that manip- 
ulated by the commander of an ocean liner, said we 
could not proceed for some time, so the boy arranged 
the provisions and we had a meal in our little hen- 
coop. After a provoking wait until four o'clock the 
old banca was pushed off again and the struggle re- 
newed. The seven men, who had now been poling 
and rowing since early morning, seemed pretty well 
beat, but there was no shelter on the volcanic islands 



YESTEEDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 107 

and we had to push on. The other shore looked far 
away and we slopped forward sluggishly. The sun 
set, the moon rose, and still we were buffeting with 
the choppy waves. It reminded me a good deal of 
the sea of Galilee ; and it did seem as if the dickens 
himself was blowing at us and trying to keep us from 
ever getting to that farther shore. 

At last we reached the lee of a lofty perpendicular 
island part way across the lake, and, although its 
upright sides offered no chance to land, yet they kept 
off that southeast wind. The men shut their teeth 
hard, and in due course moved our bark around the 
point and out into more moonlight and breeze. The 
lights and shadows on the great lump of rock standing 
a thousand feet out of the water behind us were worth 
looking at, and in many places huge basaltic columns 
seemed to be holding up the mass above. Not to 
put as much labor into these lines as our men put 
into the oars, at half after ten we came to land, 
seven hours from the shore of the volcano, a dis- 
tance which in fair wind ought to be covered in a lit- 
tle over one. 

On shore there seemed to be about four huts, two 
pig-sties, and nothing more. Stared at by a crowd 
of natives whom our arrival suddenly incubated from 
somewhere, and who swarmed down to see who we 
were, we talked with our boatman, but only succeeded 



108 YESTEKDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

in finding out that we had come to a place not down 
on the map or on the highroad to the next village 
whither we were bound. It was simply a collection 
of huts, children, and pigs, situated at the lake's edge 
and connected with the outer world by a foot-path 
that led up over the hills eight miles to the nearest 
pueblo. To walk those eight miles at eleven o'clock 
was out of the question, and to sleep in one of those 
little dirty huts ashore was just as bad. The crowd 
of natives had grown, and so, to avoid being over- 
run with the eminently curious, we pushed off from 
shore and anchored out in the lake, to eat a little 
" chow " and decide what to do. Weariness tempered 
our decision, which was to sleep where we were, in the 
banca, under the hen-coop, and, having made it known 
to our trusty but hard-looking crew, they fell down 
like shots and, in less than a minute, were asleep in 
all sorts of jackstraw positions. One slept on the 
oars, another on the poles, a third on our collec- 
tion of volcanic rocks, a fourth in the bottom of the 
boat, a fifth sitting up, and a sixth — I don't know 
where. 

We three lay down side by side in the little cooped- 
over roost, and found there was just room to reside like 
sardines in a box. Our feet were out under the stars 
at one side, our heads at the other, and there we 
were, and there we slept, in an unknown wilderness. 



YESTEEDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 109 

Though no one could change his position we all rested 
fairly well, and nothing happened to mar the beauty 
of the night. As the sun reddened the east, feeling 
more like awakened chickens than anything else, we 
packed up, paid out some of the heavy dollars, that 
made each of us feel like sinkers on a fish-line, and 
loaded what little luggage we had upon a bony pony 
ashore. Adieus were said to the lake and to our crew, 
and our little caravan started up a broad foot-path for 
the village of Tanauan, about eight miles away. It 
was a long walk, on no refreshment save a night's 
sleep in a hen-coop, but after passing over hills and 
dales, by nipa huts of all sizes and descriptions, 
and after being stared at by curious natives, we 
arrived at our destination, a good-sized village, in 
two and a half hours. We responded to an invitation 
of the captain of the pueblo, to take possession of his 
house, and got up a very decent breakfast out of our 
fast depleting stock. The old captain treated us most 
cordially, and after a three-hours' stay helped us to 
load ourselves and our chattels aboard two stout- 
wheeled, carromafas each hitched to two ponies. 

Off again, once more, our course was shaped over- 
land toward the other great lake up back of Manila, 
by which the return was to be made. The road was 
fearful, the ruts two feet deep in places, and the bad 
sections far more numerous than the good pieces. 



110 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

We got stuck in the mud, had to pry our conveyances 
and the ponies out, and I fear did not enjoy the beau- 
ties of the rather tame scenery on the way. At last 
the crest of a hill brought the Laguna de Bay in sight, 
and in less than an hour we reached the village of 
Calamba, on its shores. A shabby little native house 
was put at our disposal after we boldly walked up 
and took possession of it ; a swarm of children were 
shoved out of the one decent room, and in a short 
time our boy was giving us canned turtle-soup and 
herrings. In the afternoon we merely lounged about 
the town and took a swim in the lake, while in the 
evening, early after the very good little dinner got- 
ten up by our servant there was nothing to do but to 
turn in, even though the house was surrounded by the 
curious, who had looked in at the windows to watch 
people dining with knives, forks, plates, and napkins. 
The floor of our room was of bamboo slats, just 
below whose many openings were four fighting-cocks 
and when bed-time came we were tired enough to 
tumble down on the canes just as we stood. The 
cock who sang out of tune woke us at about sunrise 
Tuesday morning, and after one more swim in the 
lake we packed up our traps and prepared ourselves 
to take the Kttle Manila steamer that left at eight 
o'clock on its thirty-mile return trip. The sail down 
the lake and into the Pasig Biver was cool, delightful, 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 111 

and without incident, and at noon Tuesday we pulled 
up at the wharf at Manila, having completed an 
almost perfect circle of travel one hundred and fifty 
miles in circumference, to be heartily congratulated 
on having successfully made a trip which few per- 
form but many covet. My own cane sleeping ma- 
chine seemed good again after hen-coops and bamboo 
floors, and smooth roads and civilization far better 
than ruts and rickety carromatas. 



VI 

First Storm of the Rainy Season— Fourth of July— Chinese " Chow " 
Dogs— Crullers and Pie and a Chinese Cook— A Red-Letter Day 
— The China- Japan War — Manila Newspapers— General Blanco 
and the Archbishop — An American Fire-Engine and its Lively 
Trial— The Coming of the Typhoon — Violence of the Wind — 
The Floods Next — Manila Monotony. 

July 4th. 

The mails have been badly snarled up lately, and 

although nobody has received any letters for nearly 

two weeks, none are expected for about ten days. 

The other morning began the first real storm of the 

rainy season, and we came very near having a bad 

typhoon, but someone turned the switch, and it swirled 

up the back coast on the Pacific side and crossed 

through a notch in the mountains, some distance 

to the north of Manila, giving the city only four 

days of monstrous winds and floods of rain. The 

streets were two feet deep with water in the business 

section, and down at our house by the sea the wind 

blew so hard that it carried the tin from our roof off 

to visit the next suburb. Then it was that those 

sturdy windows of small sea-shells set into hardwood 

lattice seemed far more secure than glass, and I 

112 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 113 

doubt if anything less well constructed would have 
stood the blast that surged in from the broad bay. 

Going down-town in the morning, my carriage was 
slid clean across the road by the force of the wind, 
and once it seemed as if I might be lifted up into 
the low clouds that scudded close to the tops of the 
bamboo-trees. Huge seas came tumbling ashore on 
the beach, and the vessels in the great exposed Bay 
had all they could do to hang to their anchors, as 
the surf sometimes dashed as high as their lower 
foreyards. 

The natives never carry umbrellas in the rain, but 
march along and do not seem to mind getting wet to 
the skin. They do indeed look bedraggled in their 
thin clothes, that cling like sticking-plaster, and it 
seems as if they would get the fever. During the 
present blow, the single pony hitched to a tram-car 
often found his load moving him astern, and it was 
only by leaving the whole car wide open, so that the 
air could have free passage through from end to end 
and side to side, that he now and then made head- 
way against the blast. This was not pleasant for 
the passengers, but made less demand on the motive- 
power. The bands at the Luneta have played when 
they got a chance, but the wind howls in from the 
Bay, as a rule, louder than the tunes bowl out of 
their brass instruments. 



114 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

To-day seems to be the Glorious Fourth, and my 
colleague and I have just come back from the ship- 
ping, where the Captain of the Helen Brewer asked 
us to eat a celebrative dinner. All the ships in the 
Bay were dressed with flags, and the Brewer, which 
possessed more than her share, had a long line 
stretched from the bowsprit over the three masts 
down to the stern. Everybody was interested in 
the feast, and the Captain with the false teeth, who 
comes from New Hampshire, sent over a goose and 
some mince-pies. Eight of us sat down in the cozy 
saloon and partook of a meal altogether too hearty 
for the climate. The day was cool and overcast, and 
we spent a lazy afternoon on deck, listening to yarns 
told by two old salts who seemed to have had more 
than their share of wrecks, typhoons, and other ad- 
ventures. 

When we came ashore, at about sunset, there was 
gathered up from the remains of the feast the " seven 
basketsful," and we each went back in the launch, 
decorated with a bag of doughnuts under one arm 
and a bag of mince-pies under the other. 

One of our small family of dogs was run over by the 
tram-car the other morning, in front of the house, and 
now rests in peace in a little grave down on the beach, 
hard by the rhythmic cadence of the waves. His 
little brother, who was suffering at the time from the 




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YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 115 

distemper, was so grieved at the loss that he too 
speedily faded away, and now lies close beside the 
other victim of circumstances. On the tombstone is 
a touching epitaph: 

' ( Pompey and Nettie, here they lie ; 
Born to live, they had to die. 
The wheels of fate ran over one, 
The other was by grief undone." 

Most of the large army of dogs that make a Manila 
night hideous are of that mongrel order, which is al- 
ways looking for something to eat, but now and then 
one sees a good many of the so-called Chinese 
" chow "-dogs about the streets, and with their black 
tongues, long hair, and peculiar bushy tails that curl 
sharply up over their backs, they are quite as interest- 
ing, as unaffectionate. Over in China they make very 
good eating up to the age of three months, and from 
this fact derive the "chow" part of their name. Al- 
though they are very susceptible to changes of local- 
ity and climate, we are now making negotiations to 
have one brought over to take the place of the dear 
departed eulogized above. And later, I may even 
try the experiment of having one for Sunday dinner — 
if he doesn't make a good pet. 

The doughnuts which I brought home from the 
Brewer have proved very interesting to my cook, and 
I have been obliged to count them each day for 



116 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

purposes of security. He now watches me closely 
as I make away with one or two for breakfast, to see 
just what effect these marvellous looking " fried holes " 
have on my intellect. I notice he looks to see if 
there are any crumbs left, from which he might 
gather an inkling as to the composition of these 
curios ; but so far there haven't been any crumbs. As 
he is cooking for us now, instead of the Chinese gen- 
tleman that we originally had, this curiosity is but nat- 
ural, and some day he will probably try to furnish us 
with the native-made article. In fact he has already 
tried the experiment of concocting a mince-pie after 
the general appearance of one of the earlier donations 
made by a captain in the Bay, and the result was 
worthy of description. As I arranged to measure 
the original pie after each meal, before locking it up 
in our safe, in order to protect it from disappearing, 
my faithful cook could only guess as to its composition 
by sundry glances from afar. But being of an inven- 
tive mind he conceived the idea of chopping up some 
well-done roast beef, mixing with it some sugar and 
raisins, roofing it over with a thatch of pastry, and 
serving it for dessert. And then as we came to the 
course in question he stood in the doorway waiting for 
our verdict. His effort was worthy of all praise, but 
his pie was damnable, and pieces of it went sailing 
out the windows* 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 117 

July 28th. 

On the 20th instant a steamer arrived from Hong 
Kong, and had the honor of being the first vessel to 
come in from that port in thirty days. She was sup- 
posed to have three American mails aboard, but it 
turned out that they were down to arrive by the 
vessel coming in six days later. I came to the office 
the other morning, and looking toward my desk, 
found it almost invisible. It looked as if somebody 
in the neighborhood were the editor of a paper, and 
as if all the spring poets in the universe had sent 
their manuscripts for inspection. The desk groaned 
beneath the bulky chaos of three mails from the 
United States, delayed in transmission by the black 
plague, and fumigated together down the bay. But no 
sooner had we gotten through the first course of an 
epistolary feast than the captain of a large four- 
masted ship shuffled into the room and deposited a 
huge pot of steaming baked beans, just fresh from 
his steward's galley-stove, on the table. What with 
beans, letters, magazines, and comic papers, it might 
be said our day was a red-letter one. 

The other day my colleague and I took dinner off 
aboard the Nagato Maru, a smart steamer just in 
from Japan, and captained by an American who 
knows what it is to set a good table. It seems that 
the China-Japan war has actually broken out in all 



118 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

its glory, and as there is a vague rumor that a Chi- 
nese war-ship is waiting outside to capture this very- 
same steamer, she is going to stay here for awhile. 

The Japanese have sunk several Chinese transport 
ships already, and one of the unfortunate craft used 
to come here to Manila. In other directions the 
Chinese are said to have beaten the Japs badly on 
land, but over in this slow old moth-eaten place the 
daily papers will publish cablegrams from Spain by 
the page, that give out nothing but official stuff and 
Government appointments ; and when it comes to 
something of real interest, like a war, they will either 
be without any news whatever, or tell the whole story 
wrong side out in a single line, that may or may not 
be true. And so you are probably getting better 
news of this whole affair, twelve thousand miles away, 
than we are, who are almost on the field of action. 

Our Manila papers consist of four pages, the first 
two of which are especially reserved for advertise- 
ments. Half of one of the inside leaves is likewise 
reserved, and the remaining half is covered with 
blocks full of gloomy sentiments which relate to the 
decease of this or that person. There is a little black 
frame of type around each square, and at the top is 
a cross, with a "B. I. P." or "D. O. M." under it. 
Below comes the name of the defunct, with hour, 
minute, day, and year of his birth and death, and be- 



YESTERDAYS I1ST THE PHILIPPINES 119 

low his virtues are extolled and his friends invited 
to pray for the repose of his soul. Every year, each 
person that has died the year before has his anniver- 
sary, both in church and in the newspapers ; and 
when you recollect that out of a population of 350,000 
a good many depart each twelvemonth, it is hard to 
see why the whole paper shouldn't consist of these 
notices. The other inside page contains the news, 
and we learn that a bad odor has been discovered up 
some side-street ; that a dog fell into the river and 
was drowned ; that a perfumery store has received a 
new kind of liquefied scent ; that it will probably rain 
in some part of the island during the day ; and that 
the band on the Luneta ought not to be frightened 
off merely by a few drops that fall from some passing 
cloud. And so it goes until the French or English 
mail comes in, and then the progressive dailies copy 
all the news they can find, out of the foreign papers, 
and serve it up cold, cet. one month. 

I met General Blanco, Governor of the islands, the 
other evening, and he seemed to enjoy the good music 
and good supper which one of our popular bank-man- 
agers and his wife provided for some of us in the col- 
ony on the occasion of a birthday. He is an elderly 
man, and kindly, and appears milder in disposition 
than would seem advisable for one occupying so 
important a position. I should think he might let 



120 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

some of those sharp eyed little ministers of his run 
him, and he appears almost too modest, too kind- 
hearted, to be the ruler that he is. Suffice to say the 
General is modest in dress and modest in manner. 
He often walks up and down the Malecon promenade 
by the Bay in the afternoon, saluting everyone that 
passes, and when the vesper bells ring out the hour 
of prayer from one of the old churches inside the city 
walls he stops, removes his tall gray stove-pipe and, 
as do a host of other pedestrians, bows his head. To 
tell the truth he has little of the Spanish aspect about 
him and is just the kind of a man one would go up 
and speak to on the Teutonic or Campania. In sharp 
contrast is he to the Archbishop, who drives about 
behind his fine white horses and looks as keen as 
well-nourished. But who knows! Appearances are 
deceitful, and foolish he who trusts to them. 

August 11th. 
Two steamers have just come in from Hong Kong 
and are tied up in quarantine down at Marivelis, at the 
mouth of the Bay. The mail ought to be here in 
forty-eight hours, but two days is a very short time 
to give Manila postal authorities, for they really are 
slow enough to desire four — one in which to make up 
their minds to send a launch, two in which to go, 
three in which to come back, and four in which to 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 121 

distribute the results of their camphorated fumiga- 
tion. 

The most noteworthy thing that has happened in 
the way of excitement since the last mail was the 
operating of the new American fire-engine, which we 
imported from the States for the wealthy proprietor 
of our hemp-press, who is part Spaniard, part native, 
and part Chinese. It seems he was up in our office 
one day, and on the centre-table saw a catalogue con- 
taining pictures of a collection of our modern fire- 
fighters. He asked what those things were, and, on 
being told that they were used to put out fires, said 
he wanted one at once, the biggest we could get him, 
in order that he might reduce the insurance he was 
paying on his large store-houses and still go on col- 
lecting the premiums from those whose goods were in 
his charge. 

Although ours is an exporting business, and we do 
not know much about fire-engines, yet the occasion 
seemed auspicious, the prospect of payment sure, and 
the outlook interesting. The result was that we for- 
warded the order to New York by the first mail, and 
the other day, after four months of waiting, the pieces 
of the big engine came over on the Esmeralda, in big 
cases. They were very heavy, and the natives began 
the exhibition by nearly dropping the boiler into the 
river as they attempted to hoist it into a lighter. To 



122 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

skip over the difficulties which were encountered in 
hoisting the cases onto the quay in front of the offices 
of our well-to-do purchaser, we come to the men- 
tal hardships that were encountered in putting the 
machine together ; for no one in Manila had ever seen 
a Yankee fire engine before, and although we had a 
full description of the complicated mechanism, with 
drawings of the parts, and numbers where each piece 
was to fit onto some other piece, there was no one in 
town who could help us much in getting it into work- 
ing order. 

Fortunately, the hemp business was dull and my 
colleague and I were thus enabled to give more atten- 
tion to this Chinese puzzle than if the fibre market 
had been booming. The red wheels with gold stripes 
were the first thing to be adjusted, and the eyes of 
the onlookers who happened to be strolling up and 
down the quay opened to large dimensions as the 
covering was stripped from the nickel-plated boiler 
and the process of establishment went on. At last 
the big machine was on its feet, with valves and gear 
adjusted, and with the slight assistance which we got 
from a Spanish engineer who knew something about 
marine machinery, we found out that the whistle 
ought not to be screwed onto the safety-valve. 

Several Englishmen who happened to come by in 
the early stages of our efforts made sarcastic com- 



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YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 123 

ments on the appearance of our new toy, and could 
not see how an affair with so much gold paint on the 
wheels and so much nickel on the boiler was going 
to work successfully. But we did not say much, 
since we were well occupied in trying to find out the 
proper way to fill the boiler. Someone suggested 
pouring the water down the whistle, and so, mounted 
on a step-ladder, one to us began the interesting ex- 
periment. The water seemed to run in all right, as 
it gurgled down through the pipes, and did not leak 
out of the bottom. As there did not seem to be any 
other loophole to the boiler, we concluded this must 
be the right method, and took turns for an hour in 
emptying the contents of an old kerosene tin into the 
whistle-valve. 

Next, with great trepidation, we started a fire in 
the grate, and were rejoiced to see that the new en- 
gine was soon fuming away like an old veteran. It 
quite spruced us up to hear the fire crackle under the 
boiler ; but our heads became even more swelled when 
steam enough was generated to tickle the feed-pump 
into taking care of all the vacant lots in the boiler- 
tubes. 

When our friend Don Capitan found that the en- 
gine was going to work and knew its business, he 
said we must have a big trial and let all Manila 
see the show. To this end he sent around printed 



124 YESTEKDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

programmes of what was going to take place, to 
all the prominent people in the city — for he was an 
Alderman, by the way — inviting them to inspect 
the working of the engine and partake of a collation 
afterward in the spacious buildings of the hemp- 
press. 

Wednesday, the fatal day, arrived, and the great 
American fire-engine stood out on the quay glisten- 
ing in the sun, the centre of an admiring crowd of 
open-mouthed natives. The Englishmen in the back- 
ground rather put their heads together and shook 
them the wrong way, as they often do at anything 
American, but the natives allowed their lower lips to 
drop from overwhelming admiration. Everybody 
was curious, and all were expectant, from the small 
kids dressed in nothing but the regulation Philippine 
undershirt, who played shinney with the coal for the 
boiler and looked down the hose-nozzle, to Don Cap- 
itan himself, who went around shaking by the hands 
all the high and mighty officials who had come to 
see his latest freak. My associate and I felt fairly 
important as we gruffly ordered the police to clear 
the ground for action and blew the whistle to scare 
the audience. The huge suction-hose was run into 
the river, and our host made his pet servant jump 
in after it to hold the strainer out of the mud. Ten 
natives were stationed at the nozzle of the four-inch 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 125 

hose, which was pointed up the small plaza running 
back from the quay, and while I poked up the fire 
to give us a little impressive smoke, Rand rang the 
bell and turned on steam. 

The affair worked admirably, and the big stream 
of yellow water went so far as to gently soak down a 
lot of baled tobacco that was lying on a street-corner 
at the next block, supposedly beyond reach. The 
owner of the tobacco, thinking that a thunder-storm 
had struck the town, came to the door of his office, 
just behind, to see what was up, and, as the engine 
suddenly began to work a little better, the stream of 
water somehow knocked him over and played around 
the entrance to his storehouse. At the rate things 
were going it looked as if the exhibition would prove 
expensive and, to avoid diplomatic complications, we 
shut off steam long enough to shift the hose over for 
a more unobstructed spurt along the river. 

In a few moments after the change had been made 
an open throttle made a truly huge torrent belch 
from the long nozzle with such force as to make the 
ten hose-men feel decidedly nervous, but it did not 
stop them from turning the stream toward a lighter 
which was being polled down the Pasig by two 
Malays. The foremost was washed backward into 
the lighter, and the hindmost swept off into the river 
as if he had been a cockroach. A Chinaman who was 



126 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

paddling a load of vegetables to the Esmeralda in a 
hollow tree-trunk suffered the same fate. He and his 
greens were swished out of the banca in an instant, 
and he found himself sitting on his inverted craft 
floating helplessly down-stream. 

Then suddenly, as we opened the throttle to the 
last notch, the hose -men, in their excitement to wet 
some coolies loading hemp, far up the quay, tried to 
turn the torrent back onto the pavement, but, with 
its force of fifteen hundred gallons to the minute, 
it was too quick for them, and with one mighty 
" kerchug " broke away to send the nozzle flying 
around like a mill-wheel. Before they knew what 
struck them the ten men holding the nozzle were 
knocked prostrate, and two small boys in under- 
shirts, who were playing around in the mud-puddles 
near by, were whisked off into the river like so 
much dust. A dozen lightning wriggles of the 
hose, and the frenzied cataract shot a third boy 
through the wire door into the office of our friend, 
Don Capitan. Inside the door, on a wooden settee, 
were sitting some of the family servants holding their 
infants, and the same stream on which the boy 
travelled through the door washed the whole party, 
settee and all, across the hallway into a heap at the 
foot of the stairs. 

Outside, the audience stampeded, and the man in 



YESTERDAYS I1ST THE PHILIPPINES 127 

the river, holding on to the suction hose, had hard 
work to prevent being drawn up through the strainer 
and pumped out the other end in fragments. All 
this took place in a quarter of the time it takes to tell 
of it, and events followed each other in such quick 
succession that the hose had started to turn over 
on its back and charge on the engine before one 
of us rushed in to shut off steam. The two boys 
washed into the river were fished out more dead 
than alive, but more frightened than hurt, and the 
native Philippine policeman on duty at the front 
arrested them promptly for daring to be drowned. 
The boy blown through the screen-door had his ear 
badly torn, and was likewise arrested for not entering 
the house in a more civilized manner. The natives 
nursed their bare feet stepped on in the rush ; the 
Englishmen, who had been sarcastic several days 
before, said nothing ; but the Spaniards asked where 
the collation was, and, waterlogged though they were, 
began to eat like good ones. The policeman marched 
the three boys in undershirts to the station-house, and 
next morning the daily newspapers devoted more space 
than was usual in describing the wonderful machinery 
that came from America, for the benefit of their read- 
ers, who, like that English dude of old, " didn't weahl- 
ly dweam that so much wattah could come out of 
such a wehwey diminootive-looking affaiah." 



128 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

Otherwise, in Manila we are now enjoying the so- 
called veranillo, or little summer, which every year 
comes along about the middle of August, and which 
consists of two or three weeks of cool, pleasant 
weather, that comes between the rains of July and 
the typhoon season of September. And fine weather 
it is, with a jolly breeze blowing in from the China 
Sea all day, with delightful afternoons, moonlight 
nights, and fresh mornings. 

September 20th. 

There has been no opportunity to start letters off 
for the other side of the globe since the early days of 
the present month, on account of a typhoon which 
has visited our fair capital, and which has so de- 
layed steamers that all connections seem to have 
been scattered to the four winds. I have long been 
waiting to become acquainted with one of these 
aerial disturbances, and at last the meteorological 
monotony has been broken. 

Early in this eventful week, warnings came from 
our most excellent observatory, run by the Jesuit 
priests, that trouble was brewing down in the Pacific 
to the south and east, and by Friday signal No. 1 of 
the danger system was displayed on the flagstaff of 
the look-out tower. The news about the storm was 
indefinite, but the villain was supposed to be slowly 
moving northwest, headed directly for Manila. Sat- 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 129 

urday up went signal No. 2, and in the afternoon No. 
3, and by evening No. 4. Still everything was calm 
and peaceful, and Sunday morning dawned pleasant 
but for the exception of a dull haze. Early in the 
afternoon up went signal No. 5, which means that 
things are getting pretty bad, and which is not far 
from No. 8, the worst that can be hoisted. 

Everybody now began to get ready for the invis- 
ible monster. All the steamers and ships in the river 
put out extra cables, and the vessels in the Bay ex- 
tra anchors. No small craft of any kind were per- 
mitted to pass out by the breakwater, and later 
navigation in the river itself was prohibited. Still 
everything was calm and quiet, but the haze thick- 
ened and low scud-clouds began to sail in from the 
China Sea. Shortly after tiffin at our residence by 
the seaside, our gaze was attracted by a native com- 
ing down the street, dressed in a black coat with 
shirt-tails hanging out beneath, and wearing white 
trousers and a tall hat. He carried a decorated cane, 
wore no shoes, and marched down the centre of the 
street, giving utterance to solemn sentences in a 
deep musical voice. In short, he was the official 
crier to herald the coming of the typhoon, and as he 
marched along the bells up in the old church beyond 
our house rang out what poets would call " a wild, 
warning plea/' 



130 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

The natives opposite began hastily to sling ropes 
over the thatch of their light shanties, and one of the 
Englishmen who lived not far back of us had already- 
stretched good solid cables over the steep-sloping 
roof of his domicile. A sort of hush prevailed, and 
then sudden gusts began to blow in off the bay. 
The scud-clouds increased and appeared to be in a 
fearful hurry. The roar of the surf loudened, and 
one after the other of our sliding sea-shell windows 
had to be shut and bolstered up for precaution. 
The typhoon seemed to be advancing slowly, as they 
often do, but its course was sure. Our eight o'clock 
dinner-hour passed and the wind began to howl. 
Before turning in for the night, we moved out of our 
little parlor such valuable articles as might be most 
missed if they decided to journey off through the air 
in company with the roof, and later tried to sleep 
amidst a terrific din of rattlings. But slumber was 
impossible. Our house trembled like a blushing 
bride before the altar, and for the triumphal music of 
the " Wedding March "■ the tin was suddenly stripped 
off our rain-shed roof like so much paper. And thee 
the racket ! Great pieces of tin were slapping around 
against the house like all possessed ; the trees in the 
front garden were sawing against the cornices, as if 
they wanted to get in, and the rush of air outside 
seemed to generate a vacuum within. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 131 

At 3 A.M. things got so bad that it seemed as if 
something were going to burst, and my chum and I 
decided to take a last look into the parlor before seek- 
ing the safety of the cellar. No glass would have with- 
stood the gusts that came pouncing in from the Bay, 
but our sea- shell windows did not seem to yield. The 
rain was sizzling in through the cracks like hot grease 
when a fresh doughnut is dropped into the spider, 
and the noise outside was deafening. As our house 
seemed to be holding together, however, we gave up 
going to the regions below, and turned in again, 
thankful that we were not off on the ships in the Bay. 
Now and then the wind lulled somewhat, and blew 
from another quarter, but by early morning came 
some of the most terrific blowings I have ever felt, 
resulting from the change of direction. Down came 
all the wires in the main street; over went half a 
dozen nipa houses to one side of us, and u kerplunk " 
broke off some venerable trees that for many years 
had withstood the blast. The street was a mass of 
wreckage, as far down as the eye could see, and few 
signs of life were visible. During the rest of the day 
the wind blew most fiercely, but from the change of 
direction it was easy to see that the centre of the 
typhoon was passing off to the northwest. 

I sallied out later in the afternoon, dressed in not 
much more than a squash-hat, a rubber coat, and a pair 



132 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

of boots, whose soles were holy enough to let the water 
out as fast as it came in. It was as much as one 
could do to stand against the blast, but I managed 
to keep along behind the houses, cross the streets, 
and reach the Luneta, where all the lamps bent their 
heads with broken glass, and where the huge waves 
were flying far up into the air in their efforts to dis- 
pose of the stone sea-wall. The clumps of fishing 
and bath houses which stood perched on posts 
out in the surf were being fast battered to pieces, 
and those which were not minus roof and sides were 
washed up into the road as driftwood. The natives 
were rushing gingerly hither and thither, grabbing 
such logs as they could find, while some of the fisher- 
men's families were crouching behind a stone wall 
watching their wrecked barns, and sitting on their 
saucepans, furniture, and babies, to keep them from 
sailing skyward. The surf was tremendous, the 
vessels in the bay were shrouded in spray, and several 
of them seemed almost to be ashore in the breakers 
A steamer appeared to have broken adrift and was 
locked in the embrace of a Nova Scotia bark. But 
everything comes to an end and as night drew on 
the winds and rain subsided and comparative quiet 
succeeded a season of exaggerated movement and 
din. 

The typhoon was wide in diameter, perhaps two 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 133 

hundred miles, and so was not destructive, like the 
one that laid Manila low way back in the '80's. It 
seems that the larger the diameter of one of these 
circular storms, the less its intensity, and although 
the wind at any given time is moving with tremen- 
dous velocity within the circle, the whole disturbance 
is not advancing at a pace much over a dozen miles 
an hour. 

After the typhoon came the floods, and the old 
Pasig covered the adjacent country. The water con- 
cealed the road to the up-town club at Nagtajan 
under a depth of several feet, and one could without 
difficulty row into the billiard-room or play water- 
polo in the bowling-alley. Two of my friends were 
nearly drowned by trying to drive when they should 
have swum or gone by boat. The pony walked off 
with their carriage into a rice-field, in the darkness, 
and was drowned in more than eight feet of water. 
The boys only crawled out with difficulty, and just 
managed to reach " dry land " (that with three feet of 
water over it) in the nick of time. As it was, one of 
them practically saved the other's life, and has since 
been presented with a gold watch, which does not run. 

One of the bank-managers was to give a dinner- 
dance at his house next evening, to which everyone 
was invited, when word came that his bungalow could 
only be reached by boats, and that the festivities 



134 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

would have to be put off until the parlor floor ap- 
peared. To the north, where the actual centre of the 
typhoon passed, the railway was swept away, the 
telegraph line that connects with the cable to Hong 
Kong torn down, and the country in general laid 
under water. But the show is now concluded, and 
business, which had been paralyzed for a week, once 
more starts up with the coming of the cablegrams. 

Manila life goes on as ever, and it is curious to 
note how fast the days and weeks slip backward. 
Everyone agrees that the most rapid thing in town, 
except the winds of the typhoons, is the speed with 
which the Philippine to-day becomes yesterday. The 
secret seems to lie in the fact that there are no land- 
marks by which to remember the weeks that are 
gone. The trees are green all the year round, and 
there are no snow-storms to mark the contrast be- 
tween winter and summer. There are no class-days, 
no ball-games, and no coming out in spring fashions 
to break the orderly procession of the sun, moon, and 
stars. We wear our white starched suits every day 
in the year, and one's wardrobe is not replete with 
various checks, plaids, and stripes that mark an epoch 
in one's appearance. We cannot, like Teufelsdroch, 
in " Sartor Resartus," speculate much on the "clothes 
philosophy," though we may do so on the centres of 
indifference; for our garments are not complex 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 135 

enough to invite transcendental theorizing. Manila 
food is alike from Christmas morn to the following 
Christmas eve, and so, take it all in all, the past is 
practically without milestones, and seems far shorter 
than one in which many events make the measured 
steps more clearly differentiated. 

At present everybody dates his ideas from the 
typhoon, and that will remain a landmark for some 
time, if the fire which took place the other evening 
on the banks of the river does not usurp its po- 
sition. Ten thousand bales of hemp, and a lot of 
copra, sugar, and cocoanut-oil were sent aloft in less 
earthly form. iEsthetically the sight was beautiful, 
and the eye was charmed by the mingling of vast 
tongues of blue, green, red, and yellow flames, some 
of which burst forth from the very waters of the river 
itself on which the inflammable materials had excur- 
sioned. Our new fire-engine was on hand for the 
first time, in actual service, and, together with the 
small English engine brought out from London, did 
its duty. America, as usual, was in the lead, and 
everybody stood aghast to see the big five-inch stream 
mow down the brick walls of the burning houses like 
grain before the reaper. One native in particular, 
whose frail hut was washed to splinters by that big 
cataract played upon it to save it from the flames, said 
he'd rather lose his property by fire than to stand by 



136 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

and see the blooming bomba (fire-engine) blow it 
all to bits. The local department, as usual, lost their 
heads, and while some began to chop the tiles off 
the roofs of neighboring houses, others directed the 
streams from the hand-pumps onto the choppers. 
Even our gallant friend the American broker, who 
helps swell the number of Yankee business men in 
Manila to four, almost got roasted alive by being shut 
into an iron vault as he tried to rescue some valuable 
papers belonging to a customer and had to be soused 
with water, after his miraculous escape, to lower his 
temperature. But at length Providence and water 
prevailed, and the damage did not come to more 
than half a million dollars. 



VII 

A Series of Typhoons— A Chinese Feast-day— A Bank-holiday Excur- 
sion — Lost in the Mist — Los Banos — The " Enchanted Lake "— 
Six Dollars for a Human Life — A Religious Procession — Celebra- 
tion of the Expulsion of the Chinese— Bicycle Races and Fire- 
works. 

October 5fch. 

Phew ! We have hardly had time to breathe since 
the last mail, for we have been in the midst of ty- 
phoon after typhoon, shipwrecks, house- wrecks, and 
telegraph-wrecks, both simplex and duplex. Manila 
had scarcely gotten over talking of the war of the 
elements, above spoken of, before another cyclone 
was announced to the south, and soon we were 
going through an experience similar to that re- 
lated the other day. When that was over, every- 
body began to draw breath again, but before the 
lungs of the populace were fully expanded, the wind 
suddenly went into that dangerous quarter, the north- 
west, and up went signal No. 5 again. The blow came 
on more suddenly than the former one, and all hands 
left the business offices to go home and sit on their 
roofs. The tin was again stripped like paper from 

our portico, and great masses of metal banged 

137 



138 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

around outside with the clash of cymbals. It was a 
terrific night. The ships in the Bay dragged their 
anchors nearly to the breakwater, and in the morning 
four Spanish brigs were a total wreck. One in partic- 
ular went ashore on the bar at the river's mouth, and 
at daylight was being swept fore and aft by the great 
seas. Eight men were hanging on for dear life, and 
it looked as if they would be swallowed up in the 
great drink; but two big lifeboats were got out, and 
as the sea moderated somewhat, the sailors were at 
length rescued, just as their ship went all to smash. 
A thousand houses were blown down, many of the 
streets in Manila were flooded, telegraph lines pros- 
trated, and tram-car service interrupted. 

But things have now quieted down, and Sunday 
was a big feast-day in the Chinese quarter. All the 
wealthy Chinamen were celebrating something or 
other, and they invited all the foreign merchants, 
as well as their local friends, to the celebration. 
They served tea and refreshments in their various 
little junk shops, and some of the more influen- 
tial members of the colony of fifty thousand gave 
elaborate spreads, followed by dances and concerts. 
The streets were filled with peculiar processions of 
men carrying banners and graven images, and the 
sidewalks were lined with spectators. 

I went to one of the most pretentious of the indoor 




**0 



<o 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 139 

functions, found myself in a gorgeously furnished 
suite of apartments, decorated in true Chinese fashion, 
and was royally entertained by a shrewd Celestial 
who was supposed to be worth several million dollars. 
He began conversation with me by saying that, in his 
belief, bathing was injurious, and that he had not 
taken a bath in thirty years. From all I could judge > 
others of his brethren seemed to hold the same views 
as he, and the long rooms, halls, and corridors in due 
season got to be so warm and fragrant that it was a 
relief to escape. 

Now and then the bells in the big church rang 
lustily, and many lanterns lighted it up from cornice 
to keystone. Hundreds of carriages drove through 
the streets, apparently bound nowhere in particular, 
and the bands played in all quarters. 

It almost seems as if each week in the calendar 
brought in a religious display of some sort in some 
one part of the town, and every Sunday evening finds 
a big church somewhere blazing with light or a street 
blinking with candles. 

November 13th. 

The Monday after the departure of the monthly 
direct mail from Manila to the Peninsula is always 
devoted to our old friend " bank-holiday," and all the 
foreign merchants close their doors. This event 
occurred the first of this week, and on Saturday after- 



140 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

noon last some of the more energetic of us, deciding 
to take another little outing into the hills, started up 
the river on a small launch, bound for the big lake at 
the foot of the mountains. A drizzling rain was fall- 
ing and the weather did not look propitious, but we 
pushed on, left the mouth of the river where the lake 
empties into it, and sallied out on the broad waters 
of the Laguna de Bay. Numerous serving-boys, 
boxes of china, food, ice, and bedding ballasted the 
stern of our little steamer, and as it grew dark a feast 
was prepared for us on deck. In going up the lake, 
the pilot, who was accustomed only to navigating the 
launch along the quays of Manila itself, got quite at 
sea and lost his way in the evening mist. Some of 
us, however, more nautical than the rest, procured a 
chart, consulted a compass which the native mariner 
in his stupidity chose utterly to disregard, and by 
dint of perseverance brought the frail bark back into 
her proper course, without further mishap than run- 
ning through a series of fish-weirs. 

We anchored near a little settlement, Los Baiios, 
shortly before midnight. The deck planking did not 
make a soft bed, but nevertheless the snoring soon 
became hard likewise, and Sunday morning found us 
refreshed by the bracing air of the provinces. The 
rain had cleared away, and after an early breakfast 
the pilot ran the launch slowly ashore on a smooth 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 141 

beach, beneath a high bank fringed with bamboo. 
The gang-plank was run out, and several of our little 
party started off with guns to get some duck, snipe, 
and pigeons, which were plentiful in the jungle be- 
yond. 

Those of us who were left, with a couple of native 
guides, climbed up the steep slopes of an extinct vol- 
cano to explore a so-called " Enchanted Lake " that 
occupied the low crater. The way led past several 
ponds filled to overflowing with pink pond-lilies, 
and, as we wound up along the rising knolls, the air 
was as fragrant as that of a greenhouse. Then came 
a short climb which brought us to the crater's edge. 
The Enchanted Lake lay like a mirror below, and 
the rich foliage all about was almost perfectly re- 
flected in the still, green water. 

The locality being romantic, it is quite regular that 
there should be connected with it an interesting story 
which seems to bear on its face the evidences of truth. 
It seems there used to live a fisherman and his wife 
hard by the sloping banks that surround the En- 
chanted Lake. One day, so the story goes, the 
fisherman's spouse had reason to suspect the fidelity 
of her husband, and aflame with pious rage, she con- 
cocted a scheme to rid herself of her worser half. 
Calling upon two rival fishermen whose hut was not 
far distant, she promised them the large amount of 



142 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

twelve dollars if they would put her husband out of 
the way. This being a pot of money to them, they 
agreed to her proposition, and during one of the 
next excursions out to the distant fish-weirs in the 
parent lake below, contrived to tip him overboard 
and hold him under. Coming back in the afternoon, 
they went to the hut of the freshly made widow and 
demanded the twelve dollars. 

"I can give you but six," said she, "for I'm hard 
up." 

"But you promised us twelve if we would do the 
business," said they. 

"But I tell you I can give you but six," responded 
the widow. " Take that or nothing." 

Angry at having been thus deceived, the two murder- 
ers excitedly paddled over to the neighboring village 
of Los Banos, went to the cuartel, presided over by a 
Spanish official, and addressed him with these words : 

"A lady over there by the Enchanted Lake prom- 
ised us twelve dollars if we would kill her husband. 
We have done the job and asked her for our money, 
but she will only give us six. "We want you to arrest 
her." 

The official, thinking the whole thing a joke, laugh- 
ingly said he would attend to the matter. The two 
simple-minded criminals went off, apparently satis- 
fied, and disappeared. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 143 

Later, our friend the official thought there might 
be some truth behind the apparent absurdity of the 
yarn, and on investigation found that a murder had 
actually been committed. But someone more cred- 
ulous than the Spaniard gave a friendly warning to 
the committers of the deed, and they were not brought 
to justice until some months afterward. Such is the 
comparative esteem in which the native holds human 
life and Mexican dollars. 

Later we descended again to the bold coast-line of 
the Laguna de Bay and, to the accompaniment of 
banging guns, which showed that some of the rest of 
our party were really on the war-path, returned launch- 
ward. The hunting-expedition came in soon after 
with large bags of snipe and pigeon, and all hands 
then joined in a series of dives off the stern of our 
boat, or soused around in the tepid water. The group 
of savages living in the huts near by were much 
startled at our taking plunges headlong. They them- 
selves never dive otherwise than feet first, for it 
is a common superstition among the "Filipinos that 
the evil water-spirits would catch them by the head 
and hold them under if this article came along before 
the feet put in an appearance. 

At noontime our native cooks did themselves proud 
in getting up a game breakfast, and in the afternoon 
the launch backed off and steamed across the narrow 



144 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

bay to Los Banos itself, a little town clustering 
around some boiling springs whose vapor floats over 
a good hotel and some elaborate bathing-establish- 
ments. This seems to be a rather favorite resort for 
the Spanish population of Manila at certain times of 
the year, and once or twice a week the old side- 
wheeler Laguna de Bay stops here on her way up 
from the capital to Santa Cruz. 

Behind the town the land slopes steeply up to the 
mountain heights of still another extinct volcano, 
whose ghost exists merely to give life to the hot waters 
of the springs below. In front it runs off to the lake 
shore, and, all in all, the scenery is as picturesque as 
the air is healthy. From Los Banos we crossed the 
lake, cruised down along the abrupt mountainous 
shores between the two fine old promontories of 
Halla Halla, that jut out like the prongs to a W, 
and stopped every now and then at some particu- 
larly attractive little native village coming down to 
the water's edge. At about sundown on Monday 
afternoon, the prow was turned Manilaward, and 
after a cool sunset sail of twenty miles we drew in 
at the portico of the uptown club, all the better for 
our two day's trip, which cost us each but a little 
over five gold dollars. 

Last night there occurred another one of those re- 
ligious torchlight processions which are so common 







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22 

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YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 145 

in the streets of Old Manila. It started after sunset, 
inside the city walls, from a big church brightly illu- 
minated from top to bottom with small candle-cups 
that gave it the appearance of a great sugar pal- 
ace. The procession consisted of many richly deco- 
rated floats, containing life-size figures of saints and 
apostles dressed in garments of gold and purple 
and borne along by sweating coolies, who staggered 
underneath a draping that shielded from view all save 
their lower limbs and naked feet. The larger floats 
were 'covered with dozens of candelabra and guarded 
by soldiers with fixed bayonets. Other rolling floats 
of smaller magnitude were pulled along by little 
children in white gowns, while troops of old maids, 
young maids, and Spanish women marched be- 
fore and behind, dressed in black and carrying 
candles. The black mantillas which fell gracefully 
from the heads of many of the torch-bearers gave 
their faces a look of saint-like grace, except at such 
times as the evening breeze made the candle-grease 
refractory, and one might easily have imagined him- 
self a spectator at a celebration in Seville. 

Many bands all playing different tunes in differ- 
ent times and keys, rows of hard-faced, fat-stom- 
ached priests trying to look religious but failing 
completely to do so, and five hundred small boys, 
who, like ours at home, formed a sort of rear guard 



146 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

to the solemnities, all went to make up the peculiar 
performance. The whole long affair started from the 
church, wound through the narrow streets, and finally 
brought up at the church again, where it was saluted 
by fireworks and ringing of bells. 

In the balconies of the houses that almost overhung 
the route were smiling crowds of lookers-on, and Ro- 
man candles and Bengola lights added impressiveness 
to the scene, or dropped their sparks on the garments 
of those promenading below. As the various images 
of the Virgin Mary and the Descent from the Cross 
passed by, everyone took off his hat and appeared 
deeply impressed with religious feeling. After the 
carriers of the floats had put down for good their 
expensive burdens in the vestry of the church, a few 
liquid refreshments easily started them quarrelling as 
to the merits of their respective displays. One set 
claimed that their Descent from the Cross was more 
life-like than that carried by their rivals, and they 
almost came to blows over which of the Virgin Marys 
wore the finest clothes. 

Yesterday was the celebration of the expulsion of 
the Chinese invaders from the Philippines, about a 
hundred years ago, and the whole city was aglow 
with flags and decorations. In the afternoon every- 
body went to the Luneta to see the bicycle races and 
to hear the music. A huge crowd surged around the 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 147 

central plaza, and the best places in the band-stand 
were reserved for the Spanish ladies and Government 
dignitaries. The races were slow, but the crowd 
cheered and seemed perfectly satisfied as one after 
another of the contestants tipped over going around 
the sharp corners. After the races a beautiful Span- 
ish maiden, whose eyes were so crossed that she 
must have easily mixed up the winning bicycle with 
the tail-ender, distributed the prizes, and the police 
had hard work to keep the crowd from overwhelming 
the centre of attraction. Then everybody listened to 
the music, walked or drove around in carriages, and 
waited for the fireworks, which were set off not long 
after sunset. The costly display was accompanied 
by murmurings of " Oh ! " from hundreds of throats. 
There was an Eiffel Tower of flame, several mixed- 
up crosses that twisted in and out of each other, nu- 
merous scroll-wheels, fountains, and a burst of 
bombs and rockets. Some of the parachute stars 
gracefully floated out over the Bay and descended 
into the water, causing startled exclamations from 
the natives, who are not accustomed to look on fire- 
works with equanimity. But as of old, everything 
finally ended in smoke, and the multitude melted 
away, thoroughly satisfied with the celebration of the 
anniversary of the victory over the Chinese. 

As it seems about time to take a longer rest than 



148 YESTEEDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

usual from the labor attendant on waiting for a boom 
in the hemp market, I hope next week to start off on 
one of the well-equipped provincial steamers, that 
makes a run of two thousand miles south, among 
the sugar-islands and the hemp-ports, and in the 
next chapter there ought to be a rather long account 
of what is said to be a very interesting voyage. 



VIII 

A Trip to the South— Contents of the " Puchero "— Romblon— Cebu, 
the Southern Hemp-Centre — Places Touched At — A Rich Indian 
at Camiguin— Tall Trees — Primitive Hemp-Cleaners — A New 
Volcano — Mindanao Island — Moro Trophies— Iligan — Iloilo — 
Back Again at Manila. 

December 23, 1894. 
I have just returned from the south, and feel able 
enough to begin the narrative. On Saturday, De- 
cember 1, thick clouds obscured the sky, and gusty 
showers of rain continued to fall until evening, 
when they formed themselves into a respectable 
downpour. It was objectionable weather for the 
dry season just commencing, but the northwest 
monsoon was said to be heavy outside, and the rain 
on our east coast evidently slid over the mountains 
back of Manila, instead of staying where it belonged. 
Such was the day of starting, while, to cap the climax, 
just before the advertised leaving-time of the Uranus, 
word came from the Jesuit observatory that a typhoon 
was apparently getting ready to sail directly across 
the course we were to take, and up went signal 
No. 3 on the flag-staff at the mouth of the river. 

Philosophers, however, must not be bothered by 

149 



150 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

trifles, and although my friends predicted a miserable 
voyage, and told me to take all my water-proofs 
and sou' westers, I went aboard the steamer with a 
smiling countenance only, followed by three " boys " 
who deposited my traps in a state-room of lean pro- 
portions. 

At half after seven in the evening the whistle blew, 
the visitors departed, and the Uranus slowly began 
to back down the narrow river into the black night. 
She is one of the largest and newest " province 
steamers" in the Philippines, and it took a great 
deal of manipulation to turn her around and get her 
headed toward the Bay. As large, perhaps, as one of 
our coasting boats that runs to the West Indies, she 
has a flush deck from stem to stern, and is ruled over 
by a very jolly, stubby, little Spanish captain who 
looks eminently well fed if not so well groomed. 

"We got out of the river at eight o'clock, saw the 
three warning, red, typhoon lanterns glaring at us, and 
started full speed ahead for Eomblon, our first calling- 
port, eighteen hours away. Dinner was served on 
deck from a large table formed by closing down the 
huge skylights to the regular dining-saloon below, 
and the eaters took far more enjoyment in their 
Spanish bill of fare under the awnings than they 
would have done had the same victuals been dished 
np downstairs. I say " victuals," for the word seems 



_ 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 151 

to be the only invention for just such combinations 
as were set before us, and " dished up " suggests 
the scooped-out-of-a-kettle process far better than 
" served." Spanish food is rather too mixy, too gar- 
licky, too unfathomable for me, but as one can get 
used to anything I accommodated myself to the pu- 
chero (a mixture of meat, beans, sausages, cabbage, 
and pork), and was soon eating fish as a fifth course 
instead of a second. The feast began with soup 
and sundries, and was continued by the puchero 
which was merely an introduction to the fish course, 
the roast, and all the cheese and things that fol- 
lowed. Every dinner was practically the same, dif- 
fering slightly in details, and the deck each time played 
its part as dining-room. Early breakfast came at six, 
late breakfast came at ten, and dinner poked along at 
five — a combination of meal hours which was enough 
to give one indigestion before touching a mouthful. 

During the night we all waited in vain to hear the 
sizzling of the typhoon that came not, and got up 
next morning to find the scare had been for 
nothing. The clouds and rain were clearing away, 
and the prow of the Uranus was headed directly 
for a region of blue sky. By breakfast-time there 
was hardly a cloud in the heavens, the rooster 
up for'ard began to crow, the mooly-cow which we 
were soon to eat began to moo, the islands in front 



152 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

drew nearer, and the scene became fairer each moment. 
At noon we steamed below a great mountainous island, 
crossed a sound between it and another group, entered 
a narrow channel, and at one o'clock dropped anchor 
in the small land-locked harbor of Romblon. Every- 
where the hills fell abruptly into the water, and houses 
looked as if they had slid down off the steep slopes to 
hobnob with each other in a mass below. There was 
a public bath down beside a brook, where everybody 
came to wash, an old church, the market-place, and a 
prodigious long flight of steps leading up to the upper 
districts, where the view down back over the low 
nipa houses toward the bay was most extensive. 

We stayed in this little Garden of Eden until after 
three o'clock, then pulled out to the steamer, and left 
again for the south, over a calm sea and beneath 
a glorious sky. Some of us slept on deck in the 
moonlight, but, finding it if anything too cool and 
breezy, were up betimes to see the island of Cebu 
looming on our right hand. Our early six-o'clock 
breakfast finished, we sat up on the bridge in easy- 
chairs, beneath the double awning, as the Uranus 
poked down along the mountainous coast toward the 
city of Cebu. At ten o'clock we passed through the 
narrow channel that leads between a small island and 
its big brother Cebu, and soon saw the white houses 
of the town lapping the harbor's edge. Two Ameri- 




A Citizen from the Interior. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 153 

can ships were apparently taking in their cargoes of 
hemp, and beside them a small fleet of native craft 
and steamers smudged the little bay. Anchor was 
dropped again and those of us who cared to go ashore 
met some of our former friends from Manila on 'change 
and took a look over this great hemp-centre of the 
South. 

The local excitement was limited, and, except that 
a Chinaman had been beheaded by some enemy the 
night before as he was walking home through the 
street, news was scarce. Numerous people, however, 
were gathered together outside the police-station, 
looking at the remains, and several sailors from the 
American ships, who had swum ashore during the 
night to get drunk, were being returned to their vessels 
in charge of the civil guard. 

The Uranus was not to stop long, and most of the 
through passengers returned early to the steamer to 
enjoy a view tempered by rather more breeze and less 
smell than that which the narrow streets afforded. 
Cebu, from the deck, was worthy of a sonnet ; the 
white houses and church spires were set off against 
the dark-green background of mountains, and as the 
sun got lower the place did not have the broiled- 
alive aspect that it bore during the middle of the 
day. At four the stubby little Captain came aboard, 
and soon we turned northeast for our next stopping- 



154 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

place, Ormoc. Another colored sunset, another din- 
ner in the golden light, another moonrise, another 
sail up among the islands, and at eleven on the 
evening of Monday we entered the harbor of Or- 
moc. Here two or three ponies were hoisted over- 
board to be taken landward, a can of kerc::one was 
loaded into the purser's boat as he went ashore with 
the papers, and a little chorus of shoutings concluded 
our midnight visit to the second stop of the day. 

Tuesday morning the sun rose over the lofty moun- 
tains on the island of Leyte, and the Uranus shaped 
her course for Catbalogan, another of the larger 
hemp-ports. The steam up the bay blotched with 
islands was perfection, and by ten o'clock the anchor 
hunted round for a soft bed in the ooze, some eight 
hundred yards off a sandy beach, above which lay the 
town. Those of us who had energy enough to bolt 
our hearty breakfast were taken by the jolly-boat onto 
the mud flats, and were carried through the shal- 
low water on oars to dry land. On the slopes of the 
higher mountains, behind the town, the hemp-plants 
(looking exactly like banana-trees), grew luxuriously, 
and in front of many of the houses in Catbalogan 
the white fibre was out drying on clothes-lines. 
A short taste of the hot sun easily satisfied our 
curiosity as to Catbalogan, and we were off to the 
ship again for more breakfast, just as several hungry- 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 155 

looking Spanish guests, including the Governor's 
family, came aboard from the town to partake of a 
meal hearty enough to last them till the arrival of 
the next steamer. 

From Catbalogan to its sister town, Tacloban, four 
hours to the south, the course leads among the nar- 
row straits between high, richly wooded islands, 
and the scenery was most picturesque. Here and 
there little white beaches gleamed along the shore, 
and in front of the nipa shanties that now and then 
looked out from among the trees hung rows of hemp 
drying in the sun. Off and on the big waves, kicked 
up by the forward movement of the Uranus in the 
land-locked waters, woke up the stillness resting on 
the banks, and nearly upset small banca loads of the 
white fibre which was perhaps being paddled down 
to some larger centre from more remote stamping- 
grounds. From the bridge our view was most com- 
prehensive, and it wasn't long before the steamer 
actually entered the river like strait that separates 
the islands of Samar and Leyte. We twisted around 
like a snake through the narrow channel, on each side 
of which were high hills and mountains, richly treed 
with cocoanuts and hemp -plants, and, just as the sun 
was getting low, hauled into Tacloban, situated in- 
side an arm of land that protects it from the dashing 
surges of the Apostles' Bay beyond. 



156 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

At Tacloban there was little to see. A high range 
of hills rose behind the town, and in the evening 
half-light everything looked more or less attractive. 
We climbed a small knoll that looked off over the Bay 
of St. Peter and St. Paul to the south and down over 
the village. The strait through which we came 
stretched up back among the hills like a river, and 
in the foreground lay the Uranus. A number of 
hemp store-houses lined the water-front, and as usual 
the ever-present Chinese were the central figures of 
the commercial part of the community. At eight 
the anchor came up once more, and we left Tacloban 
to steam religiously down the bay of St. Peter and 
St. Paul for Cabalian, eight hours to the south. 

Cabalian is another little hemp-town, at the foot of 
a huge mountain; but in the starlight of the very 
early morning we stopped there only long enough to 
leave the mail and drop a pony overboard. Sunrise 
caught us still steering to the south, but nine o'clock 
tied our steamer to a little wharf in Surigao, directly 
in front of a large hemp-press and store-house belong- 
ing to the owners of the ship on which we were jour- 
neying. Some of the best hemp that comes to the 
Manila market is pressed at Surigao, and all around 
were stacks of loose fibre drying in the sun or being 
separated into different grades by native coolies. 
Several of us left the ship and walked to the main 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 157 

village, but, as before, found little to note except the 
intense heat of a boiling sun. 

There was the customary hill behind the town, and 
at the risk of going entirely into solution during the 
effort, two of us climbed to the top for a breath of air 
and a panoramic view. 

Dinner came along as usual at five ; but I must say 
that the more I ate of those curiously timed meals the 
less I could accommodate my mental powers to the 
comprehension of what I was doing. Everybody 
knows what a difficult psychological problem it is to 
determine the exact numerical nature of the feeling in 
the second and third toes of his feet, as compared 
with that in the fingers of his hands. On your hands 
you can distinctly feel the first finger, the middle 
finger, and the fourth finger ; but on your feet your 
second toe doesn't feel like your first finger nor as a 
second toe should naturally feel. The great toe cor- 
responds in sensation to one's first finger, and all the 
other toes save the last seem to be muddled up without 
that differentiated sensation which the fingers have. 
And so with these meals aboard ship. A ten o'clock 
breakfast was neither breakfast nor luncheon, and it 
bothered me considerably to know what in the dickens 
I was really eating. In fact, it affected my mind to 
such a degree that somehow the food tasted as if it 
did not belong to any particular meal, but came from 



158 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

another order of things ; and I spent long, serious 
moments between the courses in trying to locate the 
repast in my library of prehistoric sensations, just as 
I have often tried to locate the digit which my second 
toe corresponds to in feeling. 

We left Surigao an hour before midnight, sailed 
away over moonlit seas toward the island of Cami- 
guin, and when I stuck my head out of the port-hole 
at half after five next morning, the two very lofty 
mountain-peaks which formed this sky-scraper of the 
Philippines were just ridding themselves of the garb 
of darkness. Three of us went ashore at seven, and 
were introduced to a rich Indian, who, although the 
possessor of four hundred thousand dollars, lived in a 
common little nipa house. He invited us to see the 
country, fitted us out with three horses and a mounted 
servant, and sent us up into the mountains, where his 
men were working on the hemp-plantations. 

We started up the sharp slopes, and were soon get- 
ting a wider and wider view back over the town and 
blue bay below. First the path was bounded with 
rice-fields, but, as we rose, the hemp plants which, as 
before said, look just like their relatives, the banana- 
trees, began to hem us in. Now and again we came 
to a little hut where long strings of fibre were out 
drying in the sun, but our boy kept going upward 
until we were rising at an angle of almost forty-five 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 159 

degrees. Everywhere the tall twenty-five-foot hemp- 
trees extended toward the mountain summit as far 
as the eye could carry, and we were much interested 
in seeing so much future rope in its primogenital 
state. Up we went across brooks, over rocks, beneath 
tall, tropical hardwood trees, nearly two hundred feet 
high, that here and there lifted themselves up toward 
heaven and at last came to the place where the natives 
were actually separating the hemp from strippings by 
pulling them under a knife pressed down on a block 
of wood. The whole little machine was so absurdly 
simple, with its rough carving-knife and rude levers, 
that it hardly seemed to correspond with the elaborate 
transformation that took place from the tall trees to 
the slender white fibre separated by the rusty blade. 
One man could clean only twenty-five pounds of hemp 
a day, and when it is remembered the whole harvest 
consists of about 800,000 bales, or 200,000,000 pounds 
per year, it seems the more remarkable that so rude an 
instrument should have so star a part to play. We 
each tried pulling the long, tough strippings under the 
knife that seemed glued to the block, but there was a 
certain knack which we did not seem to possess, and 
the thing stuck fast. All in all this visit to the hemp- 
cleaners will supply us with strong answers to letters 
from manufacturers who have written us to make 
efforts in introducing heavy machines for separating 



160 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

hemp from the parent tree, but who have failed to 
understand that a couple of levers and a carving knife 
are far easier to carry up a steep mountain-slope than 
a steam engine, and an arrangement as big as a mod- 
ern reaper. We lingered about all the morning on 
these up-in-the-air plantations, and at noon picked 
our way slowly back again over the stony path to the 
village, glad that we didn't have to earn fifty cents a 
day by so laborious a method. 

Leaving our host with a promise to come ashore 
again and use his horses in the afternoon, we went 
down to the long pier and rowed off to the Uranus in 
one of the big ship's boats that was feeding her emp- 
ty forehold with instalments of hemp. In the early 
afternoon we again went ashore, took other ponies 
and started off up the coast toward a remarkable vol- 
cano, which, though not existing in 1871, has since 
been business-like enough to grow up out of the sandy 
beach, until it is now a thousand feet high. A whole 
town was destroyed during the growing process, but 
to-day the signs of activity are not so evident. The 
path up the mountain-side was terrifically stony and 
somewhat obscure. Long creepers frequently caught 
us by the neck, or wound themselves about our feet, 
in attempts to rid the ponies of their burden. It was 
a laborious undertaking, and it didn't look as if we 
should reach the crater before dark, but we kept on 




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YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 161 

ascending, thinking each knoll would give us that 
longed-for look into the business office of the volcano. 
But in vain. It was now getting so near sunset that we 
feared to lose the way, and, instead of pushing on 
farther, we reluctantly turned about and went full 
speed astern. The descent was unspeakable ; the 
horses' knees were tired ; they stumbled badly ; the 
vines and creepers snarled us up, and everyone mut- 
tered yards of cuss-words. On the way down we saw 
several wonderful views over the hemp-trees to the 
coast below, met numerous natives cleaning up their 
last few stalks of fibre for the day, and at last came 
out once more on the rough pasture-road leading to 
Mambajao, off which the Uranus was anchored. It 
was now moonlight, we all broke into a gallop for the 
three-quarter-hour ride to the village, and everybody, 
including the jaded ponies, thanked Heaven when we 
reached the first lights of the town. 

Late the same evening the Uranus left, sailed 
around the island's western edge in the moonlight, 
and turned southward for Cagayan, on Mindanao 
Island, the last of the Philippines to resist subjection 
by the Spanish and now the scene of wars and con- 
flicts with the bloodthirsty savages who are indige- 
nous to the soil. 

Morning introduced us to a shaky wharf and to a 
group of gig-drivers, who said the town was fully 



162 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

three miles away. We were in the enemy's country, 
but nevertheless two of us started off to walk to the 
village, following quite a party who had already 
taken the road. It was an hour' s plod along beneath 
tall cocoanut-palms before we came to the main part 
of the settlement, surrounding the jail, court-house, 
and residence of the Spanish Governor. Hard by ran 
a river spanned by a curious suspension-bridge. It 
carried the high road to the village and country on 
the other bank, and in our party from the steamer 
was an engineer who had come down to inspect this 
structure, which but a short time ago had utterly 
collapsed under the strain of its own opening exercises, 
killing a Spaniard, and cutting open the head of the 
Governor's wife. Of late, however, the bridge had 
been repaired, and the question seemed to be, was it 
safe ? For my benefit, as I walked over the long eight - 
hundred-foot span, the old bridge wobbled around like 
a bowl of jelly, and considering that there were alli- 
gators in the reflective waters below, I did not feel 
I was doing the right thing by my camera and friends 
to stay longer where I was. Some of the secondary 
cables were flimsy affairs, and inspection revealing the 
fact that the structure was just one-twentieth as 
strong as it ought to be, placards were put up to the 
effect that the bridge was closed except for the passing 
of one person at a time. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 163 

At the bridge we fell into talk with a pleasant 
Spaniard, who was the interventor or official go- 
between in affairs concerning Governor and natives. 
We asked him as to the prospects of finding some 
Moro arms, knives, and shields in the settlement 
for being in a district upon which a recent descent 
had been made it seemed as if the town should be 
rich in bloody curios. He gave us some encourage- 
ment, and off we trotted across the central plaza with 
its old church, on an expedition of search. It seems 
that all the houses around this plaza were armed to 
the teeth, and in time of need the whole place 
could be transformed into a fort. Every house in 
the pueblo had one of the newest type of Mauser 
rifles standing up in the corner, and in fifteen 
minutes fifteen hundred men could be mustered 
ready armed to fight the savage Moros. We really 
felt as if we were in one of the Indian outposts of 
early American days, and were quite interested in the 
conversation of our guide, who seemed to take a great 
liking to two foreigners. We went into several 
little huts where knives and spears were hung upon 
the doors, and succeeded in exchanging many of our 
dollars for rude, weird weapons with waving edges 
or poisoned points. We passed several "tamed" 
Moros in the street and took off some bead neck- 
laces, turbans, and bracelets which they had on. 



164 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

Further search revealed shields and hats, and be- 
fore the morning turned to afternoon we had visited 
nearly half the houses in the village. Sometimes a 
tune on the ever-present piano, coaxed out by yours 
truly, would bring a shield from off the wall, and at 
others the more telling music coming from the jing- 
ling dollars was more effectual. 

For dinner we went to the house of the interventor 
to lunch on some grass mixed with macaroni, canned 
fish, bread and water, and if I hadn't been so much oc- 
pied with our Spanish conversation I might have felt 
hungry. After the meal our host wanted me to take 
a photograph of him and his wife dressed up in a 
discarded theatrical costume, and it was quite as lu- 
dicrous as anything on the trip. An upholstered 
throne — part of the stage-setting in their play of the 
week before — was rigged up in the back yard, and 
the senor and seiiora, robed as king and queen of 
Aragon, put on all the airs of a royal family as they 
stood before the camera. These good people pulled 
the house to pieces to show us wigs, crowns, and 
wooden swords, and it seemed as if we should never 
get away. Later, however, our good friend borrowed 
a horse in one place, a carriage in another, helped us 
to go around and collect our various purchases, pre- 
sented me with a shield which he took down off his 
own wall, and drove us back to the steamer. Here 



YESTEEDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 165 

we unloaded all the stuff, and, surrounded by a curi- 
ous throng of questioners, went aboard to stow our 
possessions away. The day had been a prolific one, 
and, although we had not expected to go into the 
curio business on the excursion, our respective state- 
rooms were now loaded up with gimcracks that would 
interest the most rabid ethnographer. 

Toward midnight the Uranus steamed out of the 
Bay of Cagayan and headed for Misamis, still farther 
south. Another calm night, and Saturday morning 
saw us approaching a little collection of nipa huts 
presided oyer by an old stone fort and backed up by 
the usual high range of mountains. Two Spanish 
gunboats, the Elcano and Ulloa, all flags flying, in 
honor of Sunday or something were at anchor in the 
Bay, and at eight o'clock we pulled ashore to frit- 
ter away an hour or so in looking about an un- 
interesting village. There was a saying here that no 
photographer ever lived to get fairly into the town, 
for the only two who had ever come before this way 
were drowned in getting ashore from their vessels. As 
I walked about the streets, several Indian women 
stuck their heads out of the windows of their huts 
seeming quite amazed to see a live picture-maker, and 
asked in poor Spanish how much I would charge for 
a dozen copies of their inimitable physiognomies. 

Misamis business detained the Uranus but for a 



166 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

short hour, and she then turned her head across the 
Bay eastward for Iligan, the seat of all the war oper- 
ations in Mindanao. During the two hours and a 
half that our course led close along the hostile shore, 
we had breakfast and arrived at Iligan, the most dis- 
mal place in the world, about two o'clock in the 
afternoon. Everything looked down-in-the-mouth 
except the thermometer, and that was up in the roar- 
ing hundreds. The town was like all other Philip- 
pine villages, except that around the outskirts were 
the ruins of an old stockade with observation-towers, 
and in the streets soldiers, both native and Spanish, 
held the corners at every turn. 

While I paddled across a creek to get a photo- 
graph of some friendly savages on the other bank, one 
of my steamer friends went up to the Government 
house to make a formal visit. It seems he found no 
one at home except the wife of one of the high de- 
partment officials, and she was reading the latest let- 
ters just fresh from the mail-bag of the Uranus. As I 
got back from across the river I heard a tremendous 
pandemonium going on in the upper story of the 
building in question, and soon my fellow-passenger 
came bolting dow r n the stairs and out into the street 
below. The poor woman, on reading in her freshly 
opened letter that her husband, who had but recently 
gone up to Manila for a week's stay, was an abscond- 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 167 

er to the extent of some three hundred thousand dol- 
lars, suddenly lost her mind. He had tried to get 
across to China, so it seemed, but was taken on the 
sailing-day of the steamer, and the wife now first 
heard the news. So, as chairs and flower-pots came 
sailing out the windows or down the stairs, we wise- 
ly decided to get out of harm's way, and together 
walked back to the steamer-landing, musing on Span- 
ish methods of pocket-lining. 

The Moros themselves are sturdy beggars, though 
most picturesque ones, and the tame specimens that 
came into Iligan were curious in the extreme. 
Dressed in native-made cloths of all colors, their 
heads were ornamented with turbans of red and white 
and blue, while gaudy sashes gave them an air of 
aristocratic distinction which few of their northern 
brothers possessed. Some of them black all their 
teeth, others only put war-paint on their two front 
pairs of ivories, and while some looked as if they had 
no chewing machinery at all, others appeared as if 
they might only have played centre rush on a modern 
foot-ball team. 

For years now Spain has sent men and gun-boats 
down to Mindanao to wipe out the savages and 
bring the island under complete subjection, but with- 
out avail. Young boys from the north have been 
drafted into native regiments to go south on this 



168 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

fatal errand. The prisons of Manila have been 
emptied and the convicts, armed with bolos or 
meat-choppers, have followed their more righteous 
brethren to the front. Well-trained native troops 
have gone there ; Spanish troops have gone ; officers 
have tried it, but to no end. If, in the storming of 
some Moro stronghold, a dozen miles back inland 
from the beach, the convicts in the front rank were 
cut to pieces by the enemy, it was of no importance. 
If the drafted youths were slaughtered, there were 
more at home. If the native troops failed to carry 
the charge, things began to look serious. But if the 
Spanish companies were touched, it was time to flee. 
Such have been the tactics in this great grave-yard, 
and where the Moros lost the day, fever stepped in 
and won. The towns along the coast are Spain's, 
but the interior still swarms with savages, who are 
there to dispute her advance and are daily tramping 
over the graves of many of her soldiers. 

We left Moro land at eight o'clock in the evening, 
after dining various officials who came aboard to 
see what they could get to eat, and by Sunday morn- 
ing at sunrise had crossed northward to the island of 
Bohol, dropping anchor in Maribojoc, a small unin- 
teresting place with an old church, a Spanish padre 
who had not been out of town in thirty years long 
enough ever to see a railroad or a telephone, and the 




Moro Chiefs from Mindanao. See page 167- 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 169 

usual collection of thick-lipped natives. We stayed 
here to unload a lot of bulky school-desks and chairs 
destined to be used by the semi-naked youth of the 
vicinity, and a few of our company went ashore 
merely to walk lazily about the village. 

Next, a second stop at Cebu for the mails bound 
Manilaward, a good-by for the second time to our 
friends, and the Uranus now kept back down the 
coast toward Dumaguete, a prosperous town on the 
rich sugar-island of Negros. At ten o'clock that 
night we were off again, and Tuesday noon ushered 
us in to Iloilo, the second city of the Philippines. A 
lot of " go-downs " (store-houses) and dwellings on the 
swampy peninsula made a fearfully stupid-looking 
place, and the glare off the sheet-iron roofs was blind- 
ing. Scarcely a foot above tide-water, Iloilo was far 
less prepossessing than Manila, but everyone seemed 
cordial, and friends were so glad to see us that we 
appeared to confer a favor in stopping off to see them. 
The surroundings of Iloilo are far more picturesque 
than those of Manila, and just across the bay a 
wooded island, whose high altitude stands out in 
bold contrast to the marshes over which the city 
steeps, gave an outlook from the town that compensat- 
ed for the inlook over dusty streets and dirty quays. 
The English club occupied its usually central position 
in the commercial section of the city, and formed an 



170 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

oasis of refreshment in the midst of the thirsty desert 
of iron roofs surrounding it. And if any single stanza 
of verse could have been quoted to describe the feel- 
ings of a newly arrived guest, sitting in a long chair 
on the club piazza and looking off at the bubbling 
volumes of hot air rising from those roofs, it would 
have been that in which the poet says : 

" Where the latitude's mean and the longitude's low, 
Where the hot winds of summer perennially blow, 
Where the mercury chokes the thermometer's throat, 
And the dust is as thick as the hair on a goat, 
Where one's throat is as dry as a mummy accursed, 
Here lieth the land of perpetual thirst." 

The afternoon-tea hour is perhaps more carefully 
observed among the English business houses here 
than in the capital to the north, and we left the very 
good little club, with its billiard-tables and stale 
newspapers, to join one of the regular gatherings in 
the large office of a friend. But tea, toast, jam, and 
oranges had no sooner been set before us than the deep 
whistle of the Uranus sounded, and those of us who 
were going north had to make a hurried adjournment 
to the neighboring wharf. Then, as everybody on 
deck began to say " adios," and everybody on shore 
" hasta la vista," the stubby little captain roared out 
" avante '' and our steamer started for Manila, two 
hundred and fifty miles away. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 171 

Next morning we got our first taste of the monsoon, 
and it came up pretty rough as we crossed some of 
the broad, open spaces between the islands. There 
were three dozen passengers aboard ship, and every- 
body, including four dogs, was desperately sea-sick. 
But sheltering islands soon brought relief to the pre- 
vailing misery, the dogs recovered their equilibrium 
enough to renew the curl in their tails, and the heav- 
ing vessel grew quite still. We touched again at 
Eomblon, on our way up, long enough to get the 
mail and bring off an unshaven padre or two, bound 
up to the capital for spiritual refreshment, and for 
the last time headed for Manila. The monsoon 
apparently went down with the sun; we were not 
troubled further with heaving waters, and early on 
Thursday morning passed through the narrow mouth 
of Manila Bay, just as the sun was rising in the 
east, and the full moon setting over Mariveles in the 
w r est. The Uranus made a short run across the 
twenty-seven miles of water to the anchorage among 
the shipping, and everybody bundled ashore in a noisy 
launch, almost before the town had had its breakfast. 

In the afternoon, when the steamer came into the 
river, I brought all of my arms, armor, and shells 
ashore to the office, and the American skippers who 
were waiting for free breezes from the punkah 
began outbidding each other with offers of baked 



172 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

beans and doughnuts for the whole collection. At 
home, the house had not been blown away, but was 
firm as ever; the dogs rejoiced to see me back; the 
cat, with a crook in her tail, purred extra loudly; 
the ponies, that had grown fat on lazy living, pawed 
the stone floor in the stable; the boy put flowers 
on the table for dinner and peas in the soup, and the 
moon looked in on us in full dress. Thus ended 
a fortnight's trip of some two thousand miles down 
through the arteries of the archipelago,. 



IX 



Club-house Chaff— Christmas Customs and Ceremonies— New Year's 
Calls— A Dance at the English Club— The Royal Exposition of 
the Philippines— Fireworks on the King's Fete Day— Electric 
Lights and the Natives— The Manila Observatory— A Hospitable 
Governor — The Convent at Antipolo. 

December 26th. 

"'A young Bostonian, in business in the Philip- 
pines,' that is you, isn't it ? " 

"'Trembling like a blushing bride before the 
altar.' " " Well, blushing bride, how are you ? " 

"'The bells in the old church rang out a wild, 
warning plea.' They did, did they? And did, 'The 
lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea ? ' " 

" 'The fishermen's wives were sitting on their sauce- 
pans, furniture, and babies, to keep them from sailing 
off skyward.' Poor things ! Quite witty, weren'i they ? " 

These were some of the expressions that greeted 
me as I entered the Club the other evening, about 
two hours after the last mail arrived. 

My attention was called to the bulletin-board where 

the official notices were posted, and there, tacked up 

in all its glory was a printed copy of my letter on the 

173 



174 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

typhoon, while on all sides were various members of 
the English colony, laughing boisterously, and poking 
me in the ribs with canes and billiard-cues. Some 
of the brokers had apparently learned the contents 
of that fatal letter by heart, and stood on chairs recit- 
ing those touching lines in dialogue with unharnessed 
levity. 

To say that I was mildly flummuxed at hearing my 
familiar verbiage proceeding from the mouths of 
others would be mild, but it was impossible not to 
join in the general laugh, and digest, in an offhand 
way, the jibes and jokes which were epidemic. It 
seems my cautions have been of no avail, and the 
letter which you so kindly gave the Boston editor to 
read and print was sent out here to my facetious 
friend the American broker, whose whole life seems to 
be spent in trying to find the laugh on the other man. 
Somebody else also sent him a spare copy to give to 
his friends, and down town at the tiffin club next noon, 
my late entrance to the breakfast-room was a signal 
for the whole colony to suspend mastication and with 
clattering knives and clapping hands to vent their 
mirth in breezy epithets. But jokes are few and far 
between in this far Eastern land, and somebody or 
other might as well be the butt of them. 

Just as surely as the 24th of December comes 
around, all the office-boys of your friends, who have 



YESTERDAYS IJST THE PHILIPPINES 175 

perhaps brought letters from their counting-room to 
yours, all the chief cooks and bottle-washers of 
your establishment, all of the policemen on the va- 
rious beats between your house and the club, and all 
the bill-collectors who come in every month to wheedle 
you out of sundry dollars, have the cheek to ask for 
pourboires. Imagine a man coming around to collect 
a bill, and asking you to fee him for being good 
enough to bring that document to hand. But that is 
just what the Manila bill-collector does at Christmas- 
tide. Then all of the native fruit-girls, who each day 
climb the stairs with baskets of oranges on their 
heads, come in with little printed blessings and hold 
out their hands for fifty cents. 

Once out of the office, you go home to find the ice- 
man, the ashman, the coachman, and the cook all 
looking for tips, and you are compelled to feel most 
religiously holy, as you remember that it is more 
blessed to give than to receive. 

Christmas-eve, somehow, did not seem natural, 
though the town was very lively. Some of the shops 
had brought over evergreen branches from Shanghai 
to carry out the spirit of the occasion. The streets 
were crowded with shoppers, everybody was carrying 
parcels, and if it had been cold, we might have 
looked for Santa Claus. 

There are but half a dozen English ladies in our 



176 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

little Anglo-Saxon colony, and each of them takes a 
turn in giving dinners, asking as her guests, besides 
a few outsiders, the other five. On Christmas-eve 
took place one of these rather stereotyped feasts, and 
afterward the guests went down in carriages to the 
big cathedral, that cost a million dollars, inside the 
old walled town, to hear the midnight mass. Ac- 
companied by a large orchestra and a good organ, 
the mass was more jolly than impressive. The 
music consisted of polkas, jigs, and minuets, and 
everybody walked around the great building, talk- 
ing and smiling most gracefully. A few of the really 
devout sat in a small enclosed space in the centre of 
the church, but they found it hard to keep awake, 
and their eyes were red with weeping, not for the 
sins of an evil world, but from opening and shutting 
their jaws in a series of yawns. 

Just before the hour of midnight, comparative 
quiet ensued with the reading of a solemn prayer or 
two, but just as the most reverend father who was 
conducting the ceremonies finished bowing behind 
the high gold and velvet collar to his glittering gown, 
thirteen bells wagged their tongues that broke up 
the stillness of the midnight, and everybody wished 
everybody else " Felices Pascuas ! " (Merry Christ- 
mas !) The organ tuned up, the boy-choir sang itself 
red, white, and blue, the priestly assistants swung 




is, 



a, 



<o 



O 
U 



c 



o 

-<— • 
3 

o 

o 
o 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 177 

the censors until the church was heavy with fra- 
grance, and all those who had nothing else to do 
yawned and wished they were in bed. 

After staying a little longer, our party left, and 
went over to the Jesuit Church near by, where a very 
good orchestra seemed to be playing a Virginia reel. 
Here were similar ceremonies modified somewhat to 
suit the rather different requirements of the Order, 
and after staying long enough not to appear as in- 
truding spectators, we made our exit. 

And now that Christmas is all over, everybody 
seems to be wearing a new hat, the most appropriate 
present that can be given in this land of sun-strokes 
and fevered brows. 

January 5th. 

The new year has come and gone, though out this 
way no one believes in turning over a new leaf. 

It seems to be a custom to start the year by calling 
on all the married ladies of the colony, who make 
their guests loquacious with sundry little cocktails 
that stand ready prepared on the front verandas. 
Everybody makes calls, till he forgets where anything 
but his head is situated, and then brings up at the 
club out by the river-bank more or less the worse for 
wear. In honor of the day, the menu was most 
attractive, but many of the party were in no condition 
to partake, and spent the first day of the new calen- 



178 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

dar in suffering from the effects of their morning 
visits. 

With the new year came the dance, which we bach- 
elor members of the club gave to the English ladies 
in particular and to Manila society in general, as a 
small return for hospitality received, and it was de- 
clared a huge success. The club-house was decor- 
ated from top to toe. Two or three hundred invita- 
tions were sent out, and the creme de la creme of the 
European population were on hand, including Gen- 
eral Blanco, the governor of the islands. 

The English club rarely gives a dance more than 
once in five years, and when the engraved invitations 
first appeared there was much talk and hobnobbing 
among the Spaniards to see who had and who had 
not been invited. All the greedy Dons who had ever 
met any of the clubmen expected to be asked, and 
considered it an insult not to receive an invitation. 
One high official, who had himself been invited, wrote 
to the committee seeking an invitation for some 
friends. As, of course, only a limited number could 
be accommodated at the club-house, the invitations 
were strictly limited, and a reply was sent to the 
Spanish gentleman in question, stating that there 
were no more invitations to be had. 

" Do you mean to insult me and my friends ? " he 
wrote, "by saying that there are no more invitations 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 179 

left for them ? Do you mean to say that my friends 
are not gentlemen, and so you won't ask them ? I 
must insist on an explanation, or satisfaction." 

For several days before the party one might have 
heard young women and girls who walked up and 
down the Luneta talking nothing but dance, and the 
Spanish society seemed to be divided up into two 
distinct cliques, the chosen and the uninvited. 

The chosen proceeded at once to starve themselves 
and use what superfluous dollars they could collect 
in buying new gowns at the large Parisian shops on 
the Escolta. Most of the Spanish women in Manila 
can well afford to be abstemious and devote the sur- 
plus thus obtained to the ornamentation of their per- 
sons, since they are so fairly stout that the fires of 
their appetite can be kept going some time after actual 
daily food-supplies have been cut off. The men, how- 
ever, seem to be as slender as the women are robust, 
and they, poor creatures, cannot endure a long fast. 
Nevertheless, the cash-drawers of the Paris shops got 
fat as the husbands of the wives who bought new 
gowns there grew more slender ; and just before the 
ball came off these merchant princes of the Philippines 
actually offered to contribute five hundred dollars if 
another dance should be given within a short time, 
so great had been the rush of patrons to their attrac- 
tive counters. 



180 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

To make a long story short, after a lot of squab- 
bles and wranglings among those who were invited 
and those who were not, the night of the party came, 
and only those who held the coveted cards were per- 
mitted by the giants at the door to enter Paradise. 

Japanese lanterns lighted the road which led from 
the main highway to the club, and the old rambling 
structure was aglow with a thousand colored cup- 
lights that made it look like fairyland. Within and 
without were dozens of palms and all sorts of tropi- 
cal shrubs, and the entrance-way was one huge 
bower-like fernery. Around the lower entrance- 
room colored flags grouped themselves artistically, 
and below a huge mass of bunting at the farther 
end rose the grand staircase that led above. Up- 
stairs, the ladies' dressing-room was most gorgeous, 
and the walls were hung with costly, golden-wove 
tapestries from Japan. The main parlor formed one 
of the dancing-rooms and opened into two huge ad- 
joining bed-chambers which were thrown together in 
one suite. All around the walls and ceilings were gar- 
lands and long festoons and wreaths, and everywhere 
were bowers of plants, borrowed mirrors, and lights. 

Out on the veranda, overhanging the river, were 
clusters of small tables, glowing under fairy lamps, 
and the railings were a mass of verdure. 

The orchestra consisted of twenty-five natives, 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 181 

dressed in white shirts whose tails were not tucked 
in, hidden behind a forest of plants, and as the clock 
struck ten they began to coax from their instruments 
a dreamy waltz. The guests began to pour in — 
Spanish dons with their corpulent wives, and strap- 
ping Englishmen with their leaner better halves. 
The Spaniards, sniffing the air, all looked longingly 
ioward the supper-rooms, while the ladies who came 
with them ambled toward the powder and paint 
boxes in the boudoir. I suppose about two hundred 
people in all were on hand, and the sight was indeed 
gay. After every one had become duly hot from 
dancing or duly hungry from waiting, supper was 
served, and there was almost a panic as the Spanish 
element with one accord made for the large room at 
the extreme other end of the building, where dozens 
of small tables glistened below candelabra with red 
shades, and improvised benches groaned under the 
w r eight of a great variety of refreshments. 

Soon the slender caballeros got to look fatter in 
the face, and the double chins of their ladies grew 
doubler every moment. Knives, forks, and spoons 
were all going at once, and talk was suspended. But 
the room presented a pretty sight, with its fourscore 
couples sitting around beneath the swaying pun- 
kahs, and the soft warm light made beauties out of 
many ordinary-looking persons. 



182 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

After everybody was satisfied, dancing was re* 
snmed in the big front rooms on the river, and the 
gayety went on ; but the heavy supper made many of 
the foreign guests grow dull, and the cool hours of 
early morning saw everyone depart, carrying with 
them or in them food enough for many days. 

Thus ended the great ball given to balance the 
debt of hospitality owed by the bachelors to their 
married friends, and now will come the committee's 
collectors for money to pay the piper. 

January 31st. 

Manila has been quite outdoing herself lately, and 
the gayeties have been numerous. The opening of 
the Royal Exposition of the Philippines took place 
last week, and was quite as elaborate as the name 
itself. 

The Exposition buildings were grouped along the 
raised ground filled in on the paddy-fields, by the 
side of the broad avenue that divides our suburb of 
Malate from that of Ermita, and runs straight back 
inland from the sea. The architecture is good, the 
buildings numerous, and with grounds tastefully dec- 
orated with plants and fountains, it is, in a way, like 
a pocket edition of the Chicago Exposition. 

Everybody in town was invited to attend the open 
ing ceremonies by a gorgeously gotten-up invitation, 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 183 

and interesting catalogues of the purpose of the ex- 
hibition and its exhibits were issued in both Spanish 
and English. To be sure, the language in the 
catalogue translated from the Spanish was often 
ridiculous, and announcements were made of such 
exhibits as " Collections of living animals of laboring 
class," and " tabulated prices of transport terrestrial 
and submarine." But all of the elite of Manila were 
on hand at the ceremonies, from the Archbishop and 
Governor-General down to my coachman's wife, and 
bands played, flags waved in the fresh breeze, tongues 
wagged, guns fired, and whistles blew. General 
Blanco opened the fair with a well- worded speech on 
the importance of the Philippines, of the debt that 
the inhabitants owed to the protection of the mother- 
country, and of the great future predestined for the 
Archipelago. And just as the speaker had finished 
and the closing hours of the day arrived, the new 
electric lights were turned on for the first time. 
Then all Manila, hitherto illuminated bv the dull and 
dangerous petroleum lamps, shone forth under the 
radiance of several hundred arc-lights and a couple 
of thousand incandescent ones. 

The improvement is tremendous, and the streets, 
which have always been dim from an excess of real 
tropical, visible, feelable, darkness, are now respect- 
ably illuminated. 



184 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

The exposition was opened on the name-day of the 
little King of Spain, and every house in town was re- 
quested, if not ordered, to hang out some sort of a 
flag or decoration. It was said that a fine of $5 
would be charged to those who did not garb their 
shanties in colors of some sort, and all the natives 
were particular to obey the law. It was indeed 
instructive, if not pathetic, to see shawls, colored 
handkerchiefs, red table-cloths, carpets, and even 
sofa-cushions, hanging out of windows, or on poles 
from poverty-stricken little rripa huts, and any article 
with red or yellow in it seemed good enough to an- 
swer the purpose. We, in turn, were also officially 
requested to show our colors, and I hung out two bath- 
wraps from our front window, articles which I had 
picked up on the recent excursion to Mindanao, and 
which the wild savages there wear down to the river 
when they go to wash clothes or themselves. But 
they likewise had enough red and yellow in their 
composition to fill the bill, and, together with five 
pieces of red flannel from my photographic dark- 
room, our windows showed a most prepossessing ap- 
pearance. 

On the Sunday after the King's name-day, a costly 
display of fireworks took place off the water, in 
front of the Luneta, further to celebrate the occasion. 
The bombs and rockets were ignited from large floats 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 185 

anchored near the shore, while complicated set- 
pieces were erected on tall bamboos standing up in 
the water and bolstered from behind with supports 
and guy-lines. The exhibition began shortly after 
dinner, and never had I seen a crowd of such large 
dimensions before in Manila. There must have been 
twenty- five thousand people jammed into the near 
vicinity of the promenade, and a great sea of faces 
islanded hundreds of traps of all species and genders. 

The display was excellent, and both of the large 
military bands backed it up with good music. One of 
the set pieces was a royal representation of a full- 
rigged man-of-war carrying the Spanish flag, and she 
was shown in the act of utterly annihilating an iron-clad 
belonging to some indefinite enemy. The reflections 
in the water doubled the beauty of the scene, and 
with rockets, bombs, mines, parachutes, going up at 
the same time, there was little intermission to the 
excitement. Several rockets came down into the 
crowd, and one alighted on the back of a pony, caus- 
ing him to start off on somewhat of a tangent. 
Otherwise there were no disasters, and it was nearly 
midnight before the great audience scattered in all 
directions. 

The electric lights, of course, are of tremendous 
interest to the more ignorant natives, and every 
evening finds groups of the latter gathered around the 



186 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

posts supporting the arc-lamps, looking upward at the 
sputtering carbon, or examining the bugs which lose 
their life in attempting to make closer analyses of 
the artificial suns. 

A fresh edition of the opera company has come out 
again from Italy, and performances are given Tues- 
days, Thursdays, and Sundays. Everybody, as usual, 
is allowed behind the scenes during the intermis- 
sions, and the other evening, in the middle of a most 
pathetic scene in " Faust," a Yankee skipper, some- 
what the jollier from a shore dinner, walked directly 
across the back of the stage and took his hat off to 
the audience. Episodes like this are hardly common, 
but in Manila there are not the barriers to the stage - 
door that exist in the U. S. A. The artillery-band 
on the Luneta has several times played the " Wash- 
ington Post March " which you sent me, and which 
I gave to the fat, pleasant-faced conductor. The 
championship games at the tennis-court have begun, 
and all of the English colony generally assemble there 
to see the play just before sunset. Small dinners 
and dances are also numerous, and the cool weather 
seems to be incubating gayety. 

February 22d. 

Manila is said to have the most complete astronom- 
ical, meteorological, and seismological observatory 
anywhere east of the Mediterranean. Not to miss 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 187 

anything of such reputation, several of us decided to 
make a call on Padre Faure, who presides over the 
institution, and who is well known scientifically all 
over the world. At the observatory we were cordially 
received by an assistant, who spoke English well 
enough to turn us off from using Spanish, and were 
conducted over the establishment. Here were 
machines which would write down the motions of 
the earth in seismological disturbances, and which 
conveyed to the ear various subterranean noises 
going on below the surface. Still other instruments 
were so delicate that they rang electric bells when 
mutterings took place far underground, and thus 
warned the observers of approaching trouble. An- 
other, into which you could look, showed a moving 
black cross on a white ground, that danced at all the 
slight tremblings continually going on; and the 
rumbling of a heavy cart over the neighboring high- 
road would make it tremble with excitement. A 
solid tower of rock twenty feet square extended up 
through the building from bottom to top, and was en- 
tirely disconnected with the surrounding structure. 
On this column all of the earthquake-instruments were 
arranged; and any sort of an oscillation that took 
place would be recorded in ink on charts arranged for 
the purpose. Various wires and electric connections 
were everywhere visible, and an approaching disturb- 



188 YESTEKDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

ance would be sure to set enough bells and tickers 
a-going to arouse one of the attendants. 

The great school-building in which the observatory 
was placed was fully six hundred feet square, with a 
large court-yard in the centre containing fountains 
and tropical plants in profusion. After leaving the 
lower portions of the building, we ascended through 
long hallways, to visit the meteorological department 
above. Barometers, thermometers, wind-gauges, rain- 
measurers, and all sorts of recording instruments filled 
a most interesting room ; and Padre Faure gave us a 
long discourse on typhoons, earthquakes, and various 
other phenomena. From the roof of the observatory 
a splendid view of the city, Bay, and adjacent coun- 
try may be had, and Manila lay before us steaming 
in the sun. Before leaving, we saw the twenty -inch 
telescope, constructed in Washington under the di- 
rection of the Padre who was our guide, which is soon 
to be installed in a special building constructed for the 
purpose. He seemed much impressed by the United 
States, and at our departure presented us with one 
of the monthly observatory reports, which give the 
1 whole story of the movements of the earth, winds, 
heavens, tides, stars, and clouds, at every hour of the 
day and night, for every day during the month, and 
for every month during the year. 

Last Monday was again the usual bank-holiday; 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 189 

and on the Saturday before, the customary three of 
us who seem to be more energetic at seeing the coun- 
try than our friends, decided to take another excur- 
sion up the river into the hill-country. 

In the forenoon we gave orders to the boys to get 
ready the provisions, and meet us at the club-house 
in the early afternoon. Our plan was to take one of 
the light randans from the boat-house, row up the 
river for twelve or fifteen miles, take carromatas up 
into the hills to a place called Antipolo, and finally 
to horseback it over the mountains to Bossa Bossa, 
a lonely hill village, ten miles farther on. 

The time came. All of our goods and chattels were 
piled into the boat. We took off white coats, put on 
our big broad-brimmed straw hats, turned up our 
trouserloons, and prepared for a long row up against 
the current. But, thanks to Providence, we were able 
to hitch onto one of the stone-lighters that regularly 
bring rock down from the lake district, for use on the 
new breakwater and port-works at Manila, and which 
was being towed up for more supplies. The sun got 
lower and lower, and finally set, just as the moon rose 
over the mountains. The sail in the soft light of 
evening was very picturesque, and the banks were 
lined with the usual collection of native huts, in front 
of which groups of natives were either washing clothes 
or themselves. Large freight cascos or small bancas 



190 YESTERDAYS IK THE PHILIPPINES 

were either being poled up-stream by heated boat- 
men, or were drifting lazily down with the current, 
and everywhere a sort of indolent attractiveness pre- 
vailed. We continued on behind the lighter until al- 
most at the lake itself ; then cast adrift and branched 
off into a small side-stream that ran up toward the 
hills in a northerly direction. 

On we wound, now between a deep fringe of bam- 
boo - trees, now between open meadows, now be- 
tween groups of thatched huts, and again through 
clumps of fish-weirs, coming at last to a town called 
Cainta, nearly an hour's row from the main stream. 
We stopped beneath an old stone bridge that carried 
the main turnpike to Manila from the mountains, and 
were greeted by all the towns-people, who were out 
basking in the moonlight. They had evidently never 
seen a boat of the randan type before, and expressed 
much curiosity at the whole equipment. Before many 
moments the governor of the village appeared in the 
background and asked us to put up at his residence. 
Ten willing natives seized upon our goods and chat- 
tels, others pulled the boat up on the sloping bank, 
and we adjourned to the small thatched house where 
lived our host. The Filipinos gathered around out- 
side, the privileged ones came in, and everybody 
stared. The governor did everything for our amuse- 
ment ; called in singing-girls, with an old chap who 



YESTERDAYS IJS" THE PHILIPPINES 191 

. played on the guitar, and otherwise arranged for 
our entertainment. At eleven he said " Shoo "and 
everybody left. His wife gave us pieces of straw 
matting to sleep on, and we stretched out upon one 
of those familiar floors of bamboo slats which make 
one feel like a pair of rails on a set of cross-ties. 

Later the family all turned in on the floor in the 
same manner, and soon the cool night-wind was 
whistling up through the apertures. 

Next morning, Sunday, a hot dusty ride of an hour 
and a half, over a fearful road, continually ascending, 
brought us to Antipolo, a stupid village commanding 
a grand view over the plains toward Manila and the 
Bay beyond. To find out where we could get ponies 
to take us over the rough foot-path to Bossa Bossa, 
we called at the big convento where live the priests 
who officiate at the great white church, whose tower 
is visible from the capital. Mass was just over, but 
the stone corridors reverberated with loud jestings 
and the click of billiard-balls above. On going up- 
stairs, we broke in upon a group of padres playing 
billiards, drinking beer, smoking cigars, and cracking 
jokes ad libitum. They received us cordially, did 
not seem inclined to talk much on religious subjects, 
but advised us where we might find the necessary 
horseflesh. Not so much impressed with their spirit- 
uality as with their courtesy, we left, got three ponies 



192 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

and two carriers, and started out for the ride over the 
mountains. 

The path was narrow and steep, the sun was hot, 
but the scenery was good. On and up we went, until 
the view back and down over the lower country be- 
came most extensive. Across brooks, over stones, 
through gullies, and over trees carried us to the last 
rise, and after passing through a grove of mangoes 
we came to the edge of the ridge. Down below, in a 
fair little valley that looked like a big wash-basin, 
lay Bossa Bossa, a small collection of houses shut- 
ting in a big church without any steeple. Squarely 
up behind, on the other side of the valley, rose the 
lofty peaks of the Cordilleras, and the scene was 
good enough for the most critical. 

On descending to the isolated little pueblo, we got 
accommodation in the best house of the place, belong- 
ing to the native Governor, and adjourned for rest 
and refreshments. All we had left to eat in our 
baskets were two cold chickens, three biscuits, and 
four bottles of soda. We sent out for more food, and 
in half an hour a boy came back with the only articles 
that the market afforded — two cocoanuts. The house 
in which we were seemed to be the only one in town 
that possessed a chair, and, as it was, we found it 
more comfortable to sit on the floor. This was the 
centre of the great hunting-district, and all around in 




-:/;;£ 



■■•■ ■"-'.•■■.■•■:-'^-'.. 




~3^ 




A Half Caste. The Little Flower-girl at the Opera. See page $6. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 193 

the hills and mountains deer and wild boar were 
abundant. During the following night it got so cold 
that it was possible to see one's breath, and without 
coverings as we were, the whole party dreamed of arctic 
circles and polar bears. At daylight next morning, 
numb with the cold, we sat down to a breakfast con- 
sisting of carabao milk and hard bread made of 
pounded-rice flour, and felt pretty fairly well removed 
from tropics and civilization. The old church, which 
we could see out of the window, stood in a small plaza, 
and the steeple, which consisted of four tall posts 
covered by a small roof of thatch that protected a 
group of bells from the morning dew, was off by 
itself in a corner of the churchyard. A long clothes- 
line seemed to lead from the bells to a native house 
across the street, and we learned that the sexton was 
accustomed to lie in bed and ring the early morning 
chimes by wagging his right foot, to which the string 
was attached. 

On the return trip we met a large party of hunters 
coming up from Manila for a week's deer-shooting, 
and by noon got back to Antipolo, where we rested 
in the police-station to wait for our carromatas that 
were to arrive at one o'clock. 

The return to Cainta was as hot and dusty as the 
advance, but we were pleasantly received by our 
friend the governor, who had instructed the "boys" to 



194 YESTERDAYS I3ST THE PHILIPPINES 

have the refreshments ready for us. Later in the 
afternoon, we prepared to return to the metropolis, 
and the whole village came down to see us off. The 
governor refused to accept money for the use of his 
house, we were all invited to come again, and amid 
a chorus of cheers we shoved off for Manila. 

The row down took only three hours, but on getting 
to the club, at moonrise, it seemed as if we had been 
away three weeks. 



Exacting- Harbor Regulations — The Eleanor takes French Leave — Loss 
of the Gravina — Something about the Native Ladies— Ways of 
Native Servants — A Sculptor who was a Dentist— Across the 
Bay to Orani — Children in Plenty — A Public Execution by the 
Garrote. 

April 19th. 

If a ship in the Bay desires to load or discharge 
cargo on Sundays or religious holidays, permission 
can only be obtained through the Archbishop, not 
the Governor-General. The Easter season has come 
and gone, and as the Captain of the Esmeralda could 
not successfully play on the feelings of that highest 
dignitary of the church, his steamer had to lie idle 
for the holidays, and so miss connecting with the 
Peking, which ought to have taken the United States 
mail. 

The American yacht Eleanor dropped anchor in the 
Bay the other afternoon, and it seemed good again to 
see the countenances of some of our countrymen. It 
appears the Spanish officials did not consent to treat 
her with the courtesy which a yacht or war-ship mer- 
its, and went so far as to station cardbineros on her 

decks, as is customary on merchant-vessels to prevent 

195 



196 YESTEEDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

smuggling. The Eleanor presented a fine appear- 
ance as she lay among the fleet of more prosaic craft, 
aud her rails were decorated with Gatling guns put 
there for the voyage up through the southern archi- 
pelagoes where pirates reign. On the Wednesday 
before Holy Thursday, the owner of the Eleanor 
decided to start for Hong Kong, that his guests might 
enjoy Easter Sunday in those more civilized districts 
that surround the English cathedral. The yacht, 
like any merchantman, was obliged to get her clear- 
ance papers from the custom-house before she sailed, 
and to that end the Captain went ashore shortly after 
midday. But the chief of the harbor office had gone 
home for a siesta, remarking that he would not return 
until Monday, and that any business coming up would 
have to wait till then for attention. 

" But I must have my papers," said the Captain, 
" for we leave to-night for China." 

" Them you cannot have till Monday," replied the 
hireling in charge. 

"Then I shall have to sail without them," an- 
swered the Captain, and he stormed out of the office 
to find our consul, whom he hoped would straighten 
matters out. But the efforts of the consul were of no 
avail. The king-pin of the harbor office refused to be 
interviewed, and the Captain of the yacht returned 
aboard with fire in his eye. After a council of war 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 197 

had been held, it was decided to sail, papers or no 
papers, and the two soldiers who were pacing up and 
down the deck were told the vessel was going to sea. 

" But we won't let you go without your papers," 
said they. 

" Papers or no papers, we are going to sea to-night," 
roared the Captain. " And if you fellows don't git 
aboard into that boat mighty quick, we'll be feeding 
you to the sharks." 

The Gatling guns and show of rifles in the com- 
panion-way looked eloquent, and the two carabineros, 
murmuring that they would surely be killed for neg- 
lect of duty when they got ashore, were pushed 
down the gangway into a row-boat as the Elea- 
nor got her anchor up, and steamed out of the Bay 
in the face of Providence and the southwest wind, 
almost across the bows of the Spanish flagship 
Beina Cristina. A tremendous diplomatic hullabaloo 
resulted. The consul was summoned, the guards 
were blown up by the discharge of verbal powder, and 
it almost looked as if our representative would have 
to send for war-ships. But the matter has finally 
been straightened out, and the passengers on the 
Eleanor have probably had their Easter Sunday at 
Hong Kong. 

Curiously enough, for April, another typhoon has 
recently sailed through the gap in the mountains to 



198 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

the north of our capital, and gone swirling over to 
China, leaving in its wake a sunken steamer, which 
foundered with her living freight of close to three 
hundred souls. Out in front of the big steamship 
office across the way hundreds of natives are inquir- 
ing for their brothers or husbands or children. It 
seems the Gravina, a ship of the best part of a 
thousand tons, was coming down from the north, 
heavily loaded with rice, tobacco, and native boys, 
who, for not paying their tax bills, had been drafted 
into service for the purpose of being sent against the 
savages in Mindanao. She had only fifty more miles 
to go before reaching the entrance to Manila Bay, 
when the barometer fell, the wind hauled to the 
northwest, and the typhoon struck her. Her after- 
hatchway was washed overboard, and, deep in the 
water as she was, the seas washed over into the open- 
ing. As fast as fresh coverings were substituted they 
were ripped off and carried away. The engines 
became disabled, the water rushed into the boiler- 
room, putting out the fires, and the passengers, who 
were locked into the cabins, were panic-stricken. 
The steamer began to settle, and under the onslaught 
of a big sea, accompanied with terrific wind, suddenly 
heeled over and foundered with all on board, save 
three, the Captain standing on the bridge as she went 
down, crying "Viva Espana." Two natives and a 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 199 

Spanish woman got clear of the ship before she 
sucked them under, and floated about on an awning- 
pole and a deck-table. Scarcely had the survivors 
got clear of one danger before a shark swooped down 
on the Spanish woman, and, attracted by her lighter 
color, bit off a limb. He paid no attention to the 
two natives kicking out their feet near by, and, 
though neither of them could swim a stroke, they 
managed to paddle ashore on their supports, after 
being in the water two nights and a day. 

These two men, the only survivors of the large 
passenger-list of the Gravina, came into our office 
yesterday, and, after giving a graphic description of 
the catastrophe, easily got us to loosen our purse- 
strings. The accident is the worst that has occurred 
for many a day, and there is a gloom over the whole 
city. The newspapers came out with black borders, 
and many families are bereaved. 

May 20th. 

The more I see of these native servants, the more 
I appreciate that they are great fabricators and ex- 
cuse-makers. Your boy, for example, every now and 
then wants an advance of five or ten dollars on his 
salary. His father has just died, he tells you, and he 
needs the money to pay for the saying of a mass for 
the repose of his soul. Then comes another boy, who 
says that by his sister's marrying somebody or other 



200 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

his aunt has become his grandmother, and he wants 
cinco pesos, to buy her a present of a fighting-cock 
or something else. This matter of relationship here 
in the Philippines is a most delicate one to keep 
control of, and in the matter of deaths, births, and 
marriages among your servants' relations it is very 
essential that you keep an accurate list of the family 
tree, so that you may check up any tendency on 
their part to kill off their fathers and mothers more 
than twice or three times during the year for the 
purposes of self-aggrandizement. As an example of 
this, my own boy actually had the cheek to ask me for 
the loan of a dozen dollars to arrange for the repose 
of the soul of one of his relatives I had once before 
assisted him to bury. 

I seem to have gone a long way in my chronicles 
without speaking much of the native "ladies" in Ma- 
nila, and I owe them an apology. But one of them 
the other day so swished her long pink calico train 
in front of a pony that was cantering up to the club 
with a carromata in which two of us were seated, that 
we were dumped out into a muddy rice-field by the 
wayside. So the apology should be mutual. The 
costumes worn by the women are far from simple and 
are made up of that brilliant skirt with long train 
that is swished around and tucked into the belt in 
front, the short white waist that, at times divorced 



YESTERDAYS EST THE PHILIPPINES 201 

from the skirt below, has huge flaring sleeves of pina 
fibre which show the arms, and the costly pina hand- 
kerchief which, folded on the diagonal, encircles the 
neck. They wear no hats, often go without stockings, 
and invariably walk as if they were carrying a pail of 
water on their heads. They generally chew betel- 
nuts, which color the mouth an ugly red, smoke 
cigars, and put so much cocoanut-oil on their straight, 
black hair that it is not pleasant to get to leeward of 
them in an open tram-car. Otherwise they are gen- 
erally the mothers of many children and often play 
well on the harp. 

I made a call on the local dentist yesterday, and 
found him sitting on a wooden figure of St. Peter, 
carving some expression into the face. I thought 
I had got into a carpenter's shop instead of a den- 
tal establishment, and apologized for the intrusion. 
But the gentleman said he was the dentist, and 
dropped his mallet and chisel to usher me into his 
other operating-room. It is quite a jump from carv- 
ing out features of apostles to filling teeth, but on 
being assured that he had received due instruction 
from an American dentist, I allowed him to proceed 
to business. The whole operation lasted about seven 
and one-half minutes, and by the time I had got out 
my dollar to pay him for the filling I swallowed 
soon after, he was again at work on Biblical subjects. 



202 YESTEBDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

All in all it doesn't pay to neglect one's health in 
the Philippines, for the only English doctor that 
Manila boasts of has been here so long that the cli- 
mate has shrivelled up his memory. After he has 
attended your serious case of fever or influenza for 
several days, he will suddenly stroll in some morning 
and give you a sinking feeling with the words : 

" Oh, by the way, what is the matter with you ? " 

This is hardly comforting to one who considers 
himself a gone coon, but in justice to our friend the 
medico, I must say he never displays these symptoms 
to patients whose case is really getting desperate. 

Tons and tons of water have been drunk up by 
the clouds of late, and have just now begun to be 
unceremoniously dumped down upon flat Manila, so 
that she has seemed likely to be washed into the 
sea. But rain has been badly needed. A long heat 
has made many the worse for wear, and the doctors 
have all said that unless the rain came soon, an epi- 
demic would probably break out. 

Before the showers began, we improved the spare 
time of another Sunday and bank-holiday by an 
aquatic excursion to some of the provincial towns 
away across to the north side of Manila Bay. Don 
Capitan, the purchaser of our fire-engine and the mil- 
lionaire ship-owner who runs several lines of steamers 
and storehouses, was our host, and invited us to spend 




3 
& 



72 
'5. 



YESTERDAYS IN" THE PHILIPPINES 203 

the days as )ris guests aboard the trim paddle-wheel 
steamer that makes regular trips to the bay ports. 
Early on Sunday morning we started from the quay 
in front of the big hemp -press, and while the lower 
decks of the steamer were crowded with native mar- 
ket-women, fishermen, and Chinese, the more sightly 
portions of the upper promenade were reserved for 
us and provided with Vienna chairs. Breakfast was 
served in a large chart-room connected with the wheel- 
house, and was a fitting accompaniment to the fresh 
sail out of the river through the shipping. 

After discharging groups of passengers and freight 
into large tree-trunk boats at several little villages, we 
came at noon to Orani, the end of the outward run. 
The sister-in-law of the jet-black captain owned the 
largest house in the village, and put it at our disposal. 
Our advent had been heralded the day before, and a 
groaning table supported a sumptuous repast. 

There were four of us besides the half-caste family 
of the captain's sister-in-law, and an old withered-up 
Spaniard who used to be governor of the village. 
Various cats roamed around under the table, and on 
top were toothpicks built up into cones, Spanish 
sausages, olives, flowers, and fruit with an unpro- 
nounceable name, that looked like freshly dug pota- 
toes well covered with soil. 

Beside each chair was a red clay jar, into which 



204 YESTEKDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

each participator in the repast could from time to 
time transfer such articles as were apparently unswal- 
lowable, and all around stood thick-lipped serving 
boys, who looked as if they were only waiting to pour 
soup in one's lap, or garlic gravy down one's neck. The 
feast began with soup, and though the family could 
not well eat that with their knives, they could the re- 
maining courses. After soup came the pucliero, that 
mixture of beans, potatoes, cabbage, tough meat, 
pork, grass, garlic, and grease, and I steeled myself 
for the fray. Next came cooked hen with a limpid 
gravy accompaniment, and as the chicken had been 
alive up to within a few moments of going into the 
kettle, the question of attack was difficult. Then fol- 
lowed in succession cow's tongue and roast goat, fish, 
salad with sliced tomatoes, and dessert consisting of 
those fluffy affairs made of sugar and eggs which 
taste like captivated sea-foam. As is always custom- 
ary, cheese and fruit were served together, but while 
a servant had to carry the fruit, the cheese seemed 
inclined to walk around by itself. 

In due season all the debris was removed. A boy 
went in pursuit of the cheese and the table was cleared 
for strong coffee that looked dangerous. The mortal- 
ity, however, among the party was not great, and all 
those who were able to get up from the table went to 
take a siesta. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 205 

At about four, we were awakened by the familiar 
noise coming from the grinding of an ice-cream freez- 
er, and afternoon tea, consisting of chocolate, sand- 
wiches, cakes and frozen pudding, was served half an 
hour later. At five we were to take a drive along the 
shore in the only two landaus that the place possessed, 
and since the padre who lived close by in the big 
church had been good enough to lend us one, we 
called on him in state, taking with us, for his refresh- 
ment, a small caldron of ice-cream. His greeting 
was right cordial, and after amusing us with stories 
of his many adventures, told in fluent English, he 
dismissed us with his blessing. 

Two of our party got into his carriage, while other 
two went in that belonging to the governor of the 
town, and behind smart-stepping ponies we bowled 
off up the road that led west along the Bay. 

Old Malthus would have been interested to see the 
number of children that exist in these provincial 
villages, and it really seemed as if at least one hundred 
and two per cent, of the population were kids. About 
eighteen infants could be seen leaning out of every 
window, in every native hut, and in the streets, by- 
ways, and hedges they were thick as locusts. Most 
of these children trailed little else than clouds of 
glory, since clothes were scarce and expensive. An 
undershirt was all that any of them seemed to wear, 



206 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

and only the dudes of the one hundred and two per 
cent, wore that. 

Much to our amusement, the loiterers by the way- 
side everywhere saluted us with a " Buenos tardes, 
Padre" and it appeared that since the holy father is 
the only one who drives regularly in a landau, the 
whole population thought of course we must be he, or 
some of his saintly brethren. And so we went until 
the gathering darkness compelled a return to the start- 
ing-point. An elaborate supper, consisting of hard- 
shelled crabs and other indigestibles, was followed 
by an impromptu dance and musicale, and the even- 
ing ended in a burst of song. 

Next morning the little steamer took us and a load 
of fish and vegetables back to the capital. 

July 6th. 

Our modern journals, I know, rejoice to go into all 
the gruesome details of crime and its punishment, and 
many of their readers take as much morbid pleasure 
in poring over accounts of hangings, pictures of the 
culprit, diagrams of his cell, and last conversations 
w T ith the jailer, as do the reporters in getting the in- 
formation with which to make up long, padded articles 
paid for by the column. I am not morbidly curious 
myself, and trust you will not think I went to see the 
capital punishment of two murderers for any other 
than purely scientific reasons. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 207 

The two men who were executed on July 4th, 
just passed, were convicted of chopping a Spaniard 
to pieces to get the few dollars which he kept in his 
house, and to avenge themselves for harsh treatment. 
They were nothing more than native boys, one twenty 
and the other twenty-two, employed as servants in 
the family of the unfortunate victim. In short, they 
were sentenced to death by the garrote, and to the 
end of carrying out the decree a platform was erected 
in the open parade-ground behind the Luneta. But 
the people in the neighborhood objected. The women 
said they could not sleep from thinking over it, and 
could not bear to have their children see the scaffold. 
General Blanco was petitioned, and the place of ex- 
ecution was changed to a broad avenue that leads 
down through the back part of Manila, by the public 
slaughter-house. Surely the selection was appro- 
priate. 

On the fatal day, my colleague and I drove to the 
scene shortly after sunrise, and crowds of people had 
already begun to come together from the adjoining 
districts. Carriages of all classes rolled in from all 
directions. Chinamen with cues, natives with their 
wives, women with their infants, young girls and 
children, old men and maidens, were all there, dressed 
in their best clothes. 

I knew it would be useless to stand in the crowd, 



208 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

so I pushed over toward a nipa hut, whose windows, 
which were filled with natives, looked fairly out on 
the scaffold itself. In the name of my camera I asked 
admittance, w r hich was cordially accorded, since we 
were "Xngleses," and on going to the upper floor 
we had a free view over the crowd below toward the 
fatal platform, with its two posts to which were at- 
tached two narrow seats. The crowd increased ; they 
climbed into bamboo-trees, which bent to the ground ; 
they tried to surge up on the lower framework of the 
house in which we were standing, and only desisted 
as the proprietress slashed the encroachers right and 
left with a bamboo-cane. The roofs of neighboring 
houses were black with people, the windows swarmed, 
and the street below heaved. Our hostess was pleas- 
ant, though fiery, and all she wanted in return for 
our admission was a photograph of herself. The 
favor was granted, and she gave us two chairs to sit 
in. The crowd increased, and the guards had hard 
work keeping back the struggling mass. Every avail- 
able square inch of space was filled, and a sea of 
heads pulsated before us. 

At last, cries of " aqui vienen" (here they come) 
arose, and the solemn procession came into view after 
its long journey from the central jail, over a mile 
away. First came the cavalry, then a group of 
priests, among whom marched a man wearing an 









YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 209 

apron, carrying the sacred banner of the Church, 
embroidered in black and gold. Next marched the 
prison officials, and behind them came two small, 
open tip-carts, drawn by ponies, in which travelled 
the condemned men, each supported by a couple of 
priests who held crucifixes before their eyes, exhort- 
ing them to confess and believe. 

Following the carts, which were surrounded by a 
square of soldiers, walked the executioner himself, 
a condemned criminal, but spared from being exe- 
cuted by his choosing to accept the office of public 
executioner. Last of all came a small company of 
soldiers, with bayonetted guns, and the whole pro- 
cession advanced to the foot of the steps leading to 
the platform. 

The garroting instrument seems to consist of a col- 
lar of brass, whose front-piece opens on a hinge, and 
part of whose rear portion is susceptible to being 
suddenly pushed forward by the impulse of a big 
fourth-rate screw working through the post, some- 
thing after the system of a letter-press. The criminal 
sentenced to death is seated on a small board attached 
to the upright, his neck is placed in the brass collar, 
the front-piece is snapped to, and when all is ready, 
the executioner merely gives the handle of the screw 
a complete turn. The small moving back-piece in the 
collar is by this means suddenly pushed forward 



210 YESTERDAYS IN" THE PHILIPPINES 

against the top of the spine of the unfortunate, and 
death comes instantaneously from the snapping of 
the spinal cord. 

The executioners in Manila have always been them- 
selves criminals, and in breaking the spinal cords of 
their fellow-criminals, they certainly pay a price for 
keeping their own vertebra intact. Like most men 
in their profession, however, they are well paid, and 
this operator got sixteen dollars besides his regular 
monthly salary of twenty, for each man on whom he 
turned the screw. 

The sight of the unfortunate prisoners in the little 
carts, supported by the priests, was pitiable in the 
extreme, and their faces bore marks of unforgetable 
anguish. The priests ascended the platform, and the 
man with the embroidered banner was careful to 
stand far away at the side, for, according to the re- 
ligious custom of the epoch, a condemned man who 
merely happens to touch the standard of the Church 
on his way to the scaffold cannot thereafter be ex- 
ecuted, but suffers only life imprisonment. 

The executioner, in a derby hat, black coat, white 
breeches, and no shoes, took his position behind 
the post at one side of the scaffold, and the first vic- 
tim was carried up out of the cart and seated on the 
narrow bench. He was too weak to help himself or 
make resistance ; the black cloak was throwu over his 




The Fourth of July, ; 95- Execution by the Garrote. 

' My watch stopped and the cord-pull to my camera broke just as the screw was turned 
on the first man to be executed." See page 212. 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 211 

shoulders, a rope tied around his waist, the hood 
drawn down over his face, and the collar sprung 
around his neck. Then, while two priests, with un- 
covered heads, held their crucifixes up before him, 
and sprinkled holy water over the hood and long, 
black death-robes, the chief prison official waved his 
sword, the executioner gave the big screw-handle a 
sudden twist till his arms crossed, and without a mo- 
tion of any sort, except a slight forward movement 
of the naked feet, the first of the condemned men had 
solved the great problem. 

The second poor wretch all the while cowered in 
the little cart, but when his turn came he ascended 
the steps with more fortitude. After he had put 
on the long black gown and hood, he seated himself 
on the bench at the second post and the same process 
was repeated. But the screw-thread seemed to be 
rusty, and one of the native officials helped the exe- 
cutioner give the handle an additional turn, for which 
he was promptly fined $20. The doctor tarried a 
few moments on the scaffold, the priests read several 
prayers and shook holy water over the immovable 
black-robed figures wedded to the posts, and then, 
after one of the acolytes had nearly set fire to the 
flowing gown of the head padre with his long can- 
dle, everyone descended. 

The remnants of the procession returned to the 



212 YESTEKDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

prison, the troops stationed themselves in a large 
hollow square around the scaffold, and two dark, 
motionless figures locked to two posts were left in 
the hot sun till noon, set out against the blue back- 
ground of sky and clouds. 

The crowds began to disperse, the young girls 
chatted and joked with each other, the curious were 
satisfied, and the bamboo-trees were left to lift their 
heads at leisure. 

Thus began Manila's Fourth of July, and curi- 
ously enough, my watch stopped and the cord-pull 
to my instantaneous camera broke just as the screw 
was turned on the first man to be executed. 



XI 

Lottery Chances rind Mischances— An \mericrm Cigarette-Making 

Machine and Its Fate— Closing up Business— How the Foreigner 
Feels Toward Life in Manila - Why the English and Germans 
Return— Restlessness among the Natives Their Persecution- 
Departure and Farewell. 

August 25th. 

I lost $80,000 yesterday. Perhaps 1 have spoken 
of lottery tickets, but have failed to say what an 
important institution in Manila the "Loteria Na- 
cional" really is. Drawings come each month over 
in the Lottery Building in Old Manila, and every- 
body is invited to inspect the fairness with which 
the prize-balls drop out of ono revolving cylinder 
like a peanut-roaster while the ticket-number balls 
slide out of the other. The Government runs the lot- 
tery to provide itself with revenue, and starts off by 
putting twenty-five per cent, of the value of the 
ticket-issue into its own coffers. If all the tickets 
are not sold, the Loteria Nacional keeps the bal- 
ance for itself and promptly pockets whatever prizes 
those tickets draw. Lottery tickets are everywhere, 
in every window, and urchins of aU sizes and gen- 
ders moon about tho streets selling little twentieths 

218 



214 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

to such as haven't the ten dollars to buy a whole 
one. Guests at dinner play cards for lottery tickets 
paid for by the losers, Englishmen bet lottery tickets 
that the Esmeralda won't bring the mail from home, 
and natives dream of lucky numbers, to go searching 
all over town for the pieces that bear the figures of 
their visions. 

Four months ago I got reckless enough to plank 
$10 on the counter of the little shop, which, at the 
corner of the Escolta and the Puente de Espalia, 
is said to dispense the largest number of winning 
tickets, and became the owner of number 1700. It 
sounded too even, too commonplace, to be lucky, 
but as it was considered unlucky to change a ticket 
once handed you, I trudged off and locked the paper 
in the safe. The drawing came, and 1700 drew $100. 
Fortune seemed bound my way, so I made arrange- 
ments (as so many buyers of lucky tickets do) to keep 
1700 every month. My name was put in the paper 
as holding 1700, and for three long months I remem- 
bered to send my servant to the Government office ten 
days before the drawing, for the ticket reserved in my 
name. But for three drawings it never tempted for- 
tune. Last w r eek I forgot lottery and everything else 
in our further struggle with a new piece of American 
machinery which was being introduced for the first 
time to Manila, and woke up to-day to find it the 



YESTERDAYS IK THE PHILIPPINES 215 

occasion of the drawing. My ticket — uncalled for- 
bad been sold. At noon I walked by the little 
tienda whose proprietor had first given me the fatal 
number, to see him perched up on a step-ladder, 
posting up the big prizes, as fast as they came to 
his wife by telephone. The space opposite the first 
prize of $80,000 was empty. His wife handed him 
a paper. Into the grooves he slid a figure 1, then 
a 7, and then two ciphers. Ye gods — my ticket ! 
The capital prize — not mine ! $80,000 lost because I 
forgot — and to think that the whole sum would have 
been paid in hard, jingling coin, for which I should 
have had to send a dray or*two ! But I am not quite 
so inconsolable as my friends the two Englishmen, 
who kept their ticket for two years, and at last, dis- 
couraged, sold it, Chrismas-eve, to a native clerk, 
only to wake up next day and find it had drawn 
$100,000. They have never been the same since. 
Nor have I. 

And the machine that caused all the trouble — an- 
other whim of our rich friend, the owner of the fire- 
engine, who saw from the catalogues on our office 
table that American cigarette-machines could turn 
out 125,000 pieces a day against some 60,000, the 
capacity of the French mechanisms, which were in use 
in all the great factories in Manila. He wanted one 
for his friend that ran the little tobacco-mill up in 



216 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 



a back street, for whom he furnished the capital. 
If it worked, he was in the market for two dozen 
more, and vowed to knock spots out of the big 
Compania General and Fabrica Insular. 

Out came our machine some weeks ago, and with 
it two skilled machinists to make it work. The big 
companies pricked up their ears and appeared clear- 
ly averse to seeing an American article introduced, 
which should outclass the French machines for which 
they had contracted. 

One morning the two machinists came to our office 
and handed us an anonymous note which had been 
thrust under the door of their room at the Hotel 
Oriente : 

" Stop your work — it will be better for you." 

It was perhaps not diplomatic, but we told them the 
story of the two Protestant missionaries who some 
years before came to Manila and attempted to preach 
their doctrines in the face of Catholic disapproval. 
One morning they found a piece of paper beneath 
their door in the same hotel, reading : 

" You are warned to desist your preaching." 

Paying no attention to the warning, they woke up 
two sunrises later on to find another note beneath 
the door: 

"Stop your work and leave the city, or take the 
consequences." 






YESTERDAYS IN" THE PHILIPPINES 217 

Still they heeded not ; and a third paper under the 
door, some days later, read : 

" For the last time you are warned to leave. Heed 
this and beware of neglect to do so." 

But, like Christian soldiers, they were only the 
more zealous in their work. 

In two days more they were found dead in their 
rooms — poisoned. 

Our friends, the engineers, were not soothed by a 
relation of these facts, but kept on with their work. 
In three days they, too, got a second warning : 

" Leave your work and go away by the first 
steamer." 

Things began to look serious, and the more timid 
mechanic of the two could hardly be restrained from 
buying a ticket to Hong Kong. 

When, however, in two more days, a third piece 
of yellow paper was slipped into their rooms, bear- 
ing the pencilled words, " For the last time you are 
told to take the next steamer," the matter assumed 
such proportions that we arranged to have them see 
the Archbishop, whose knowledge is far-reaching 
and whose power complete. The letters were sud- 
denly stopped and the work on the machine carried 
to a successful completion. 

Then came the day of trial, and invitations were 
extended to interested persons to view the operation. 



218 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

The machine was started, and the cigarettes began 
to sizzle out at the rate of nearly two hundred to the 
minute. But scarcely had the run begun before there 
was a sudden jar, several of the important parts gave 
way, and the machine was a wreck. It had been tam- 
pered with, and it was evident that the instigators of 
the anonymous letters had taken this more effective 
means of stopping competition. 

The parts could not be made in Manila ; America 
was far away, and our two machinists have just gone 
home in disgust. 

Is it a wonder that I forgot the lottery drawing ? 

Somehow there are currents of trouble in the air, 
and some of the old residents say they wouldn't be 
surprised to see the outbreak of a revolution among 
the natives. Peculiar night-fires have been seen now 
for some time, burning high up on the mountain- 
sides and suddenly going out. There seems to be 
some anti-American sentiment among the powers 
that be, and only last week matters came to a crisis 
by the Government putting an embargo on the busi- 
ness of one of the largest houses here, in which an 
American is a partner. Smuggled silk was discov- 
ered coming ashore at night, supposedly from the 
Esmeralda, and as that steamer was consigned to 
the firm in question, the authorities demanded pay- 
ment of a fine of $30,000. Our friends refused, the 






YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 219 

officials closed the doors of their counting-room, our 
consul cabled to Japan for war-ships again, the Gov- 
ernor-General read the telegram, hasty summons were 
given to the parties concerned, heated arguments fol- 
lowed, and the matter was finally smoothed over on 
the surface. 

But there seems to be a distinct feeling against us, 
and we have been instructed from home to prepare 
to leave — making arrangements to turn our business 
into the hands of an English firm, who will act as 
agents after our departure. 

September 20th. 

The cable has come, and we hope by next month 
to leave this land of intrigue and iniquity. It has 
treated me well, but complications are daily appear- 
ing in the business world, and if we get away without 
suddenly being dragged into some civil dispute it 
will be delightful. 

I am glad to have been here these two years nearly, 
but it is time to thicken up one's blood again in cooler 
climes, and I feel these fair islands are no place for 
the permanent residence of an American. We seem 
to be like fish out of water here in the Far East, and 
as few in numbers. The Englishman and the German 
are everywhere, and why shouldn't they be? Their 
home-roosts are too small for them to perch upon, and 
they are born with the instinct to fly from their nests 



220 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

to some foreign land. But, America is so big that we 
ought not to feel called upon to swelter in the 
tropics amid the fevers and the ferns, and I, for one, 
am content to " keep off the grass " of these distant 
foreign colonies. 

The Englishman or German comes out here on a 
five-years' contract, and generally runs up a debit bal- 
ance the first year that keeps him busy economizing 
the other four. At the end of his first season, he 
wishes he were at home. At the end of the second, 
he has exhausted all the novelties of the new situa- 
tion. At the close of the third, he has settled down 
to humdrum life. At the end of the fourth, he has 
become completely divorced from home habits and 
modern ideals. And at the close of the fifth, he goes 
home a true Filipino, though thinking all the while he 
is glad to get away. He says he is never coming back, 
but wiser heads know better. He has heard about 
America, and goes home via ';he States, to see Niagara 
and New York. But his first laundry-bill in San 
Francisco so scatters those depreciated silver " Mex- 
icans," which have lost half their value in being turned 
into gold, that he takes the fast express to the Atlan- 
tic coast, and leaves our shores by the first steamer. 
At home, his friends have all got married or had 
appendicitis, and the bustle of London, the raw rain- 
storms of the cold weather and the conventionality of 




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YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 221 

life all bring up memories of the Philippines, which 
now seem to lie off there in the China Sea surrounded 
by a halo. And so, before a year is out, he renews 
his contract, and at the end of a twelvemonth goes 
sailing back Manilaward to take up the careless life 
where he left it, and grow old in the Escolta or the 
Luneta. In London he paid his penny and took the 
'bus, he lived in a dingy room, and packed his own 
bag. But in Manila, with no more outlay, he owns 
his horse and carriage, he lives in a spacious bungalow 
with many rooms, and he lets his servants wait on 
him by inches. How do I know ? Oh, because we've 
talked it all over, now that our turn for departure 
comes next. 

The whisperings of a restlessness among the na- 
tives continue, and it is hard to see why indeed they 
do not rise up against their persecutors, the tax-gath- 
erers and the guardia civil. Ten per cent, of their 
average earnings have to go to pay their poll-taxes, 
and if they cannot produce the receipted bills from 
their very pockets on any avenue or street-corner, to 
the challenge of the veterana, they are hustled off to 
the cuartel, and you are minus your dinner or your 
coachman. Once in the hands of the law, they are 
then drafted into the native regiments for operations 
against those old enemies, the Moros, in the fever- 
stricken districts of Mindanao, and their wives or fam- 



222 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

ilies are left to swallow Spanish reglamientos. They 
have not forgotten their brothers, who, dragged down 
from the north, went to the bottom in the typhoon 
which pushed the Gravina down. They have not for- 
gotten the execution in the public square. They re- 
member that the Spaniards address them with the 
servile pronoun " tu" not "usted" and some day they 
may remember not to forget. They are not quarrel- 
some, but they are treacherous ; they are not fighters, 
but when they run amuck they kill right and left. 
They do not seem to have many wants save to be left 
alone, to be able to shake a cocoanut from the palm 
for their morning's meal, or to collect the shakings 
from a thousand trees and ship them to Manila ; to 
collect the few strands of fibre to sew the nipa thatch 
to the frame of their bamboo roof, or to gather enough 
to fill a schooner for the capital ; in fact, to be able to 
work or not to work, and to know that the results of 
their labor are to be theirs, not somebody else's. 

But what has all this got to do with our hegira ? 
These last days have been replete with the labors 
attendant on breaking camp before the long march. 
Clearings out of furniture, selling one's ponies and 
carriages, closing up of books, shipping of one's cases 
and curios on those hemp-ships that are to start on 
the long 20,000-mile voyage to Boston, and trying to 
think of the things that have been left undone, or 



YESTEEDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 223 

ought to be done, have all gone to make the season a 
busy one. 

Now that it has come down to actually leaving 
Manila, I begin to feel the home sickness that comes 
from tearing one's self away from the midst of friends 
and a congenial life. I shall miss the hearty Eng- 
lishmen with whom I rowed or played tennis or 
went into the country. I shall miss the servants who 
got so little for making life the easier. I shall miss 
the ponies, the dogs with the black tongues, and the 
cats with the crooks in their tails ; the big fire-engine 
which we used to run, and which has now been var- 
nished over to save trouble in cleaning ; the Luneta, 
with its soft breezes and good music ; the walks out on 
to the long breakwater to see the sunset, and the hob- 
nobbing with the old salts from the ships in the bay, 
who called our office the little American oasis in the 
midst of a great desert of foreign houses. But the 
clock has struck, and the Esmeralda ought early next 
month to start us on the forty-day voyage back to 
God's country. 

October 22d. 

Is this sleep, or not sleep ? Is it reality or fancy? 
Am I laboring under a hallucination, a weird phan- 
tasmagoria, or are my powers of appreciation, my 
efferent nerve-centres and their connecting links, my 
sum total of receptive faculties, doing their duty ? I 



224 YESTEKDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

feel hypnotized. I kick myself to see if this is real, 
and am only led to conclude it is by looking into my 
sewing-kit, where the needles are rusty, the thread 
gone, and the depleted stock of suspender-buttons 
wrongly shoved into the partition labelled " piping- 
cord." I never did know what piping-cord was. My 
socks are holy, my handkerchiefs have burst in tears, 
and my lingerie in general looks as if it had been 
used for a Chinese ensign on one of the ships that 
fought in the naval battle of the Yalu. For two 
years those garments have held together under the 
peculiar processes of Philippine laundering, but 
now that barbarians have once more got hold of 
them and subjected them to modern treatment, 
they recognize the enemy and go to pieces. And 
so the condition of my clothes leads me to believe 
I am awake, although everything else suggests the 
dream. 

Actually away from Manila, actually eating food 
that is food once more, actually sleeping on springs 
and mattresses, putting on heavier clothes, talking 
the English language, meeting civilized people, and 
realizing what it means to be homeward bound ! It 
seems unreal after those two years of Manila life that 
was so different, so divorced from the busy life of 
the western world ; much more unreal than did the 
new Philippine environment appear two years ago, 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 225 

after jumping into it fresh from God's country, as the 
Captain called it. • 

Here we are, eight days out from Manila, steaming 
up through that far-famed inland sea of Japan, on the 
good ship Coptic, bound for San Francisco ; and for 
the life of me those twenty-four moons just passed 
all seem to huddle into yesterday. Surely it was only 
the day before that the China was taking me and 
my trunks the other way. And so it takes but eight 
short days of new experiences, new food, new air, to 
efface completely the effect of seven hundred yester- 
days in the Philippines. Those whole seven hundred 
seem now as but one, and when I think of all the 
housekeeping, the bookkeeping, the hemp-pressing, 
and the cheerful putting up with all sorts of things, 
they all seem to be playing leapfrog with each other 
in the dream of a night, and I wake up to find the 
pines of Japan lending a certain cordial to the air 
that is very grateful. We never knew what we were 
missing in Manila in the slight matter of eating 
alone until we got over to Hong Kong again, and it is 
perhaps just as well we didn't. To think of the " dead 
hen," as they call it, and rice, the daily couple of eggs, 
the fried potatoes, and the banana-fritters on which 
we have tried to fatten our frames, and then look at 
the bill of fare on the Coptic ! We exiles from Manila 
have gained over five pounds in these eight days, 



226 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

and would almost go through another two years in 
the haunts of heathendom for the sake of again liv- 
ing through a sundry few days like the past eight, in 
which the inner man wakes up to see his opportuni- 
ties, and makes up for lost time on soups that are not 
all rice and water, on fish that is not fishy, on chickens 
that are not boiled almost alive, on roasts that taste 
not of garlic, on vegetables that are something more 
than potatoes, on butter- that is not axle-grease, and 
on puddings and pies that are not made of chopped 
blotting paper and flavored with pomatum sauces. 

An exuberance of spirit must be forgiven, for so 
welcome is the change from the old cultivated Manila 
contentment that the present burst of native enthusi- 
asm is but natural. Not that I am playing false to 
the Malay capital— for let it be said that when once 
you have forgotten the good things at home the ar- 
ticles which that Pearl of the Orient had to furnish 
went well enough indeed — but that after schooling 
one's taste to things of low degree it is peculiarly 
melodramatic to return to things of high estate. 

Our send-off from Manila on the 14th was as gay 
as the sad occasion could warrant, and several launch- 
loads of the " bosses and the boys " worried out to 
bid us a last adios. The Esmeralda was to have 
the honor of taking us away from the place to 
which she had brought us, and I was thoroughly 







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YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 227 

prepared to go through the interesting process that 
was needed finally to straighten me out after the pe- 
culiar twisting which the voyage from Manila to 
Hong Kong had given me two years before. 

The sunset over the mountains at the mouth of the 
bay was eminently fitting in its concluding ceremo- 
nies, and it seemed to do its best for us on this last 
evening in the Philippines. The many ships in the 
fleet lay quietly swinging at their anchors. The 
breeze from the early northeast monsoon blew gently 
off the shore, and Manila never looked fairer than she 
did on that evening, with her white churches and 
towers backed up against the tall blue velvet moun- 
tains, and her whole long low-lying length lifted, as 
it were, into mid-air by the smooth sea-mirror be- 
tween us and the shore. 

Captain Tayler was as jovial and entertaining as 
ever, and the colony had no reason to regret being 
participators in the farewell. We well realized that 
our departure was an epoch in the life of the little 
Anglo-Saxon colony, and in a city where important 
events are registered as occurring "just after Smith 
arrived " or " just before Jones went away," it was 
essential to give the occasion weight enough to carry 
it down into the weeks succeeding our departure. 

Our native servants came off with the bags and 
baggage and seemed to show as much feeling as they 



228 YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 

had ever exhibited in the receipt of a Christmas 
present or a box on the ear. And some of our old 
Chinese friends, from whom we bought bales and 
bales of hemp in the days gone by, came too, bring- 
ing with them presents of silk and tea. Everybody 
looked sad and thirsty, and made frequent pilgrim- 
ages to the saloon in quest of the usual good-by 
stimulant. 

The Esmeralda panted to get away, and we had 
our last words with the motley little assemblage. 
We were seeing Manila and the most of them for the 
last time, and I confess both they and the shore 
often looked gurgled up in the blur that somehow 
formed in our eyes. 

The sun sank below the horizon ; the swift dark- 
ness that in the tropics hurries after it, brought the 
electric lights' twinkling gleam out on the Luneta 
and the long Malecon road running along in front of 
the old city, from the promenade to the river. The 
revolving light on the breakwater cast a red streak 
over the river. The white eye on Corregidor, far 
away, blinked as the night began, and, just as the 
warning of " all ashore " was sounded, the faint 
strains of the artillery band playing on the Luneta 
floated out on the breeze over the sleepy waters of 
the Bay. 

Our friends clambered aboard the launch, the cus- 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 229 

toms officers took a last taste of the refreshment that 
Captain Tayler gives them to make them genial, the 
anchor was hoisted, and, with cheers from the tug 
and the screeching of launch- whistles, the Esmeralda 
put to sea, bearing with her, in us two, half the 
American colony in Manila and the only American 
firm in the Philippines. 



CONCLUSION 

If one has thoughts of going out to the Philippines 
he should learn how to speak Spanish, and how to 
accept, " cum grano salis," descriptions of the coun- 
try, either too glowing or too gloomy. Some have 
gone to Manila and liked it, others have made their 
retreat homeward echo with tales of weary woe about 
this Malay capital. To each it seems to mean some- 
thing different according as he kept his health or lost 
it, as he fell in with the life or didn't, and as he was 
successful or unsuccessful in that for which he left the 
upper side of the globe. Before buying one's ticket 
for the Far East one must not be moved by the sugges- 
tions of " thoughtful " persons, who say you are going 
to the ends of the earth and must therefore take all 
sorts of clothes, pianos, and means of subsistence. 
Accept their sympathy but not always their advice, 
and if Manila be your destination, be assured you are 
not bound for an altogether isolated village. They 
may do some things out there which are not down 
on the programme of a day's routine in the United 

States. The fire-engines may be drawn by oxen, the 

230 



YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES 231 

natives — contrary to Biblical suggestion — may build 
the roof to their shanties first and make arrangements 
for underpinning afterward; women may smoke 
cigars, and snakes may be more effective rat-catchers 
than cats or terriers. But there are shops in Manila, 
tailors, drug-stores, parks, tramways, churches, elec- 
tric lights, schools, and theatres which are not alto- 
gether unlike those in the "Western world. 

And, in times of peace, the capital is not an alto- 
gether bad sort of a place to live in, though I can't 
say as much for some of the lesser towns. One may 
be susceptible to fever, in which case he must avoid 
sleeping near the ground or going about much in the 
sun. He may suffer from prickly heat, in which 
case he will not want to take oatmeal, drink choco- 
late, eat mangoes, or smoke pipes. Or he may be- 
come a mark for sprue — that peculiarly oriental 
disease which seems to destroy the lining to one's 
interior — in which case the quicker he takes the 
steamer for Japan or for 'Frisco the better. He 
may run against small-pox, but ought not to take it. 
He will have a cold or two, but won't hear of cholera 
or find a native word for yellow fever. Should the 
wind strike in from the northwest during the wet sea- 
son, he must look out for typhoons, and not be sur- 
prised if, like my friend the Englishman, he some 
day finds only his upright piano on the spot where his 



232 YESTERDAYS I1ST THE PHILIPPINES 

light-built house stood — the rest of his things having 
hastened to the next village. If he feels the ground 
getting restless he must look out for the oil lamps on 
the table, or the tiles on the roof. He must not take 
too cold baths, sleep in silk pajamas, or walk when he 
has the " peseta " to ride. And in all things he will 
be better off by remembering to apply that motto of 
the ancient Greeks, firjSev ayav — in nothing to excess. 
Manila is the new Mecca, and for some time to come 
she is going to be looked at on the map, talked about 
at the dinner-table and by the fireside, and written 
up from all quarters. At present this Pearl of the 
Orient is but a jewel in the rough, but with good 
men to make her laws, and her gates wide open to 
the pilgrims of the world, she soon should shine as 
brilliantly as any city in the Ear East. 










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